The Proper Slayer

by Herself_nyc

Summary:

Fists formed. "You are going to be so sorry you came back here." Half a dozen scenarios of his violent dusting arose all at once in her head.

 

"You did miss me," Spike drawled. "I'm touched."

Sequel to Let's Get Lost. (Uncompleted)

~PART ONE~

 

 

"Well," Willow said, "I guess it's twenty minutes after or twenty minutes of."

Xander glanced up from his coffee cup. "Huh?"

"That's what my Grandma used to say whenever there was one of these uncomfortable pauses in the conversation. She'd say, 'it's either twenty minutes after or twenty minutes of."

Xander checked his watch. "How do you like that."

Uncomfortable pauses, hoo yeah. Buffy had hoped, after the lousy 'Welcome Home' party where no one would talk to her, that then turned into the lousy 'Welcome Home' party where everyone was shouting angrily at her, and then into the kind of party she knew how to handle, with the zombies pouring in and the Mask of Death fused into Mom's friend's face, that things might get back to normal now in her little world.

Only it was turning out, not so much. They all seemed so ... kid-ish. Whereas she couldn't remember feeling like a kid. What she felt these days, with a curfew and a long checklist of chores to perform at home, stupid classes to show up for, and a kindergarten of a social life, was like an adult trapped in a dream of being a child who had to ask permission for every little thing, follow the rules for babies.

Plus a new slayer, Faith, had just turned up. All Buffy had gotten out of her presence so far was almost killed when Faith's big problem, Kakistos, came to town. Meanwhile Faith was doing a bang-up job of highjacking her role, her watcher, her friends.

To the point that they barely seemed to care anymore that she'd taken off and returned. The Scoobies had stopped being angry at her because they were all interested in following Faith around, listening to her brag, watching her stick her tits out. And when they weren't doing that they were all about the double-dating, Xander with Cordy and Willow with Oz and Buffy with Nobody.

Not that she was ever again relying on anything with a penis. Men Were Shits. They made you like them and trust them and open up to them and then wham! they made you wish you were a deaf-mute with your legs fused together because if that's what you were you wouldn't get into that kind of trouble. Betrayed, ditched, and trapped in a box you'd outgrown, feeling like a fool.

"I, uh, have some studying to do," Willow said, sliding off her stool. "What about you guys?"

Xander drained his coffee cup.

Like you study, Buffy thought, watching him puppy off behind like he couldn't wait to hit the books. He couldn't wait to get away from her.

Because I'm strange now. I'm not the proper Buffy anymore.

Maybe I'm not even the proper slayer anymore. Now Faith's here.

Which brought her back around again, as she walked along Main and cut left onto Las Reinas towards home, to her slow roasting rage at Spike.

She'd wanted him. She'd counted on him. She'd made plans with him.

There was no forgiveness for that.

On Revello, she considered whether to go back in via the trellis and her bedroom window, or through the door. If Mom saw her, she'd give her the third degree about her day. But if Mom didn't see her, she'd come to her room before she went to bed, and the third degree would be even longer because there'd be no escaping it by skipping off upstairs.

The door it was.

When they first got back to Sunnydale, she'd told Joyce about the long long eastbound Greyhound trip to New York City, about the checker job at the dirty supermarket and the girls she'd shared the crummy apartment with. All she'd offered to her mother's barrage of questions about Spike and Mr Vaux's house was a repeated assertion that nothing happened. She never defined happened and Joyce never explicitly asked, though she dragged Buffy off to the doctor for a full check-up that included testing her for pregnancy and every possible STD, as well as listening to the doctor hem and haw his way through a lecture about the Importance Of Making Responsible Choices Now She Was A Young Woman. After everything came up clean, neither of them referred again to the summer's events.

Her mother acted like she had blinders on--could only see what was right in front of her. Also, despite the nightly Twenty Questions thing, Mom seemed to be kind of afraid of her.

Joyce's voice rang out as Buffy opened the front door. "Is that you, honey? Have you done your patrol?"

"Yes. I met the guys for coffee after." That sounded so normal. She was all about normal now, the new normal.

Her mother appeared in the doorway, a pencil behind her ear, the small calculator clutched in her hand.

"Do you have any homework?"

"Done."

"Are you going to bed now?"

Do you HEAR yourself? Buffy bit her tongue. There was no point provoking a screaming fight. "I'm going to take a shower first."

Joyce rearranged her face into a less anxious harried expression. "I could fix us a snack first if you're hungry."

"I'm OK. I'll say good night."

"Good night, sweetheart."

The impulse to reach out for a hug was there, but Joyce had already withdrawn back towards the dining room table strewn with the gallery accounts.

Buffy took the stairs two at a time. A shower would be good. A nice long shower, where she could get herself off three or four times without her mother over-hearing her groans, and then maybe she'd feel dopey enough to fall asleep without having to do the whole Ring-Around-the-Recrimination-Rosy with herself again tonight.

Of course, she hoped that every night. It was pretty much the only hope she had left right now.

But it flew right out of her mind when she flipped on the light in her room.

"Hello, cutie. Missed me?"

His appearance, leaning on the windowsill in her pink little room, affected her like seeing a rat peek out of the bedclothes-- chaos getting in, bleeding towards disaster.

Fists formed. "You are going to be so sorry you came back here." Half a dozen scenarios of his violent dusting arose all at once in her head.

"You did miss me. I'm touched." He gave her a blatant once-over. "You're thinner, that's no good. Told you to train yourself up. Off your feed, are you?"

"Don't try to talk to me, Spike."

He nodded in seemingly amiable agreement. "Not here for chit-chat."

His forthright cool spun her up into a thunderspout of fury. Snatching up the first weapon that came to hand--a ceramic figurine of a big-eyed girl she'd had since she was five--Buffy launched herself at him. The curtains stirred as her blow came down on nothing. The breeze of his passage raised the gooseflesh on her cheek and arm. She almost lost the statuette, scooping it clear of the sill at the last second.

She spun around. Now he was leaning against the door. He grinned, showing her the tip of his tongue.

She started towards him again, already feeling doltish with the toy statuette raised over her head, but was checked by his wagging finger and the exaggerated whisper in which he said "Ah-ah-ah. Don't want to make a noise and bring your esteemed mama up here to investigate. Anyway, this isn't where it's going to happen."

She blinked. "Where what's going to happen?"

"Where I'm going to kill you."

"Not after I kill you first! Which I am so going to do, you--" Her lips were tingling, her tongue numb; the words sounded thick, odd coming out. Which I am so going to do--? Gah.

His smile took on a dreamy air, as if she was proposing an attractive fantasy. "Remains to be seen. You've never done it yet." He opened her door. "Ta for now. I'll just see myself out, shall I?"

He started towards the upstairs landing. Her paralysis opened, she slammed forward, grabbing for him. "You can't go down there!"

Her shout echoed down the stairwell. Shit. The last thing she needed was Mom poking her head out to see what she was hollering about.

He smiled again, bland and pleasant as a librarian. "Be seeing you."

His passage down the stairs and out was swift and silent. The front door drifted back on its latch with a nearly inaudible click. She sped down after, flinging the door open to give chase.

"Buffy! I thought you'd gone to bed."

Her mother's voice jerked her to a halt. "Huh? Oh ... I just wanted to check ... that ... you know, that you'd remembered to lock up."

"I will when I go up. I've got another hour's work here at least."

Her hand was still on the front door, the fresher air from the street cool against her overheated face. She imagined Spike out there, eluding her, laughing at her. She must've looked like such a tool, brandishing that figurine, babbling. Great moves, Slayer.

He could've darted off in any direction; too late to catch him now.

Waiting up for the sounds of her mother getting ready for bed, Buffy sat tense, a stake gripped in her hands, by the open window he'd entered through.

Why did you call my mother? What were you thinking? Scratch that--I know you never think! I hate you! And now I'm staking you staking you staking you! Her revenge fantasies were so incoherent they made her cheeks burn.

That first glimpse of him, like an image seen in a lightning flash, kept hitting her with renewed little shocks of incredulity. It was true, it was true, was it true? It couldn't be. Couldn't be possible. She hadn't exactly disbelieved the note, but his Special Delivery threats never felt real ... as the days rolled into weeks she'd focused only on her outrage at how he'd handed her off back into this cramped box of a childhood. She'd barely considered his motives.

For the first time she had to think of it as actual: he'd slipped his soul. And like Angelus before him, bent on revenge, he was out to ruin her life.

Well, not if she ruined his first.

As soon as the house was all quiet, she'd drop down to the yard and take off. Each minute of waiting seemed endless; her heart thubbed with an irritating, embarrassing intensity. She'd opened her history book as if she was really going to do the reading for her morning class, but of course all she could think of was when she'd get her hands on him. She'd make him hurt before she finished him off. She'd make him plead for death.

At last she was sure her mother must be asleep, and crept out onto the roof outside her window, dropped down to the turf, and took off for Crawford Street.

The old mansion there was unlit, and eerily quiet. Approaching it was hard, the air getting thicker and thicker as she drew near--she'd fought for her life here, she'd sent her lover to hell here. It felt wrong that the place was still standing--the mansion ought to be a ruin.

It only took a few minutes' snooping around to determine that no one had been near it in months. She heard rats squeaking in one room.

Huh. She'd been so sure Spike would return to the scene of the crime.

The factory, then. That must be the place he was holing up, where he'd stayed when he first brought Drusilla to Sunnydale. Of course! She should've gone there first. That was his place, before Angelus showed up.

But the factory too, when she scouted it, was deserted. There were signs on the lower levels of recent partying, but of a decidedly human variety--beer cans, pizza boxes, fug. No sign anywhere around the peripheral fence of his car, either.

Double huh.

She tried the demon bar on the far side of the tracks.

The clientele all slunk out the back as soon as she barged in, but not before she got a glimpse around the place--no white-blond head in sight.

She shook down Willy the bartender. "You know--much as I enjoy your lovely little knee in my groin--I'd tell you if I knew anything, right, Slayer?" His sickly green-toothed grin was completely ingenuous. She let him go and stormed out.

Why didn't I slay him when I had him there? So it would've been noisy. Mom knows what's the what now. Which was easy to forget, because it was still so new and sort of slip-slidey to think about.

Well, there wasn't a stake handy, for one thing--they were all in the trunk under the bed. She'd have to do something about that. He was not going to catch her out twice.

The next time she saw him, he was definitely gonna go POW!-as-in-powder.

Everything here brought back Dru. The leafy doggy scent of the suburban air, the bland streets she'd paced down in the small hours, whispering fairy tales about the houses' inhabitants as if each bungalow or ranch was a fairy cove full of treasure and magical secrets. She came to him in dreams, sometimes in tears, crying out to him in the dark where are you, where are you my Spike? and other times quiet and small, refusing to speak or talk to him no matter what he did.

He woke those afternoons thinking there was never going to be ample revenge for her loss.

He'd focused his thoughts on Drusilla the whole time since he got fixed. She was his great Unfinished Business, Unclaimed Baggage, the half of him sheered away so that, even put back to rights as he was, he'd never be whole again. He kept her in sight the whole way across the continent, in his mind's eye the figurehead of his land-yacht, the purpose of his trip.

He was going to make the Slayer pay for her death. For fucking up his unlife.

He was a little disappointed, leaving Revello, that she didn't come after him, even though that wasn't part of the plan for tonight. A little disappointed too that she hadn't made a plausible attack on him in the house. He fancied wrecking the place a bit, a little property-damage to make his evening, and this time he'd know to keep an eye out for the mother ... who was a bit of all right herself. He'd taste her too before he was done here.

But the Slayer needed to step up. Give him a proper fight before he snuffed her. That was the whole point. Not for her to stand there holding a toy in her hand, looking ... looking ... well, the girl needed to pull herself together, that was all.

Because he'd made a vow. To the memory of his Drusilla. To Love itself. Until he'd drunk deep from the Slayer, until he felt her heart slow and stop in his arms, he'd make no other kill.

She would be his next, his great and glorious triumphant kill. The kill that would initiate him back into his Unlife. The kill that would begin a bloodbath such as they'd never seen on the hellmouth.

But it had to be proper.

And it had to be soon.

Because he was bloody hungry.

But that didn't mean he was gonna starve.

The boy thrashed. He was bigger than Spike--as big as Angelus. Young and strong. But he was crocked when he walked out of the Bronze, and he parted from his friends to go into the alley for a piss. That was a mistake, though it wouldn't be fatal.

He'd never seen Spike coming, and wouldn't see him going, either. In the morning he'd wonder how his neck got punctured.

The boy's skin was hot, his blood 70 proof. Spike ground his cheek into the brick as he sucked him down, listening for the moment when the breathing changed, the heart slowed. The moment he had to detach. Dropped him then and walked away, back to his car.

The motel was one town over, by the beach. Slayer wouldn't find him here--she might ransack all of Sunnydale but it would never occur to her to look any farther afield than that. For all her smarts and sass she could be a bit of a dullard.

He liked hearing the dull roar of the waves as he lay in bed through the sun-soaked day.

That morning, sated on frat boy, he didn't go to sleep. He'd seen her, and right, it hadn't gone exactly as he'd wanted it to, but ... he'd seen her. Said his piece and felt her anger and apprehension perfume the air. Stirred her up.

Maybe even scared her.

Good. Fear would force her to find her courage. When he fought her, he needed her to be fierce and righteous and strong.

Killing his third slayer would make him famous. World famous. He'd be a master. Other vamps would seek him out, wanting to serve him. He'd have a gang again. Fuck a gang, he'd have an organization. He'd RULE.

Lying on his back in the air-conditioned room, eyes closed, he stretched and flexed, sighed and relaxed. Things weren't all bad. Yes, he was all alone, bereft of his sire and full of vengeance. But his existence that had been pulled inside out was right again. He was Spike once more, all those ugly itchy feelings of guilt and remorse put back in their proper perspective--the perspective of Who gives a fuck!

He smiled, wrapping his fist around his rising cock, putting himself back there, the rear seat of the car, the hot chirring night, Slayer's heat a knock-out, her heat and her wet needy cunt and breathless mouth, how she wriggled and snapped beneath him. All for him, all her mighty desire and her power, delicious and perfect. He'd made her forget all about Angelus, he was sure of that. Made her forget everything she was supposed to do and be around him, opened her right up to her quivering essence.

She'd belonged to him.

That's how he'd tell it, later. Tell the story of the slayer he seduced, seduced to her marrow so she was all for him ... the story of how he let her go, and came back to kill her right and proper.

What a story it was going to be.

This sucked. Faith had almost gotten her killed by that Kissy-Toes guy, and now she was over to dinner again. This was the third time mom had invited her, and now her mother was actually making 'move in' noises--telling Faith that as long as she would be responsible for her own laundry and tidying her space, she was perfectly welcome to live in the guest room because that terrible motel down by the freeway was absolutely no place for a young girl. Joyce was giving her the Agree With Me Enthusiastically glance. Buffy stirred her salad around before she murmured, "Sure. You should do that." Mom liked Faith because she talked more than Buffy did anymore, and ate more too. She would probably wreck their food budget, but hey--if Mom couldn't think of that herself, Buffy wasn't going to be the bad guy and tell her.

Later that night, while they were patrolling and Faith was peppering her with remarks about how slaying made her horny, it occurred to Buffy to wonder why she was set on disliking Faith.

After all, they had a lot in common, and wasn't she kind of taking some of the heat off? Maybe having Faith live in would distract Mom. Hell, she'd already distracted her friends, who followed her around any chance they had like goslings, and that stupid new watcher Wesley Wyndam-Whatever was more on Faith's case than on hers.

Come to think of it, they had pretty much the same attitude towards him, which was another point in common.

Buffy cut off Faith mid-stream. "Hey. Why do you keep talking about sex? Are you coming on to me?"

Well, didn't that shut her up? Faith's face went through some changes in the next few seconds, 'til it settled on a sly grin that reminded her of ... never mind who. "Why, B? You offerin'?"

Buffy hadn't been offering. She'd never thought about kissing girls, but now she focused on Faith's pouty plum-colored mouth, it looked like something that could be interesting to try.

Especially since this dry spell was looking like lasting for, oh, forever.

"Do you do that?" She asked more out of curiosity than as a next step.

Faith shrugged. "I could."

"But have you?"

Faith cocked her head. "You're refusin' to tell me any of the good stuff about you and this Angel character, but you want me to tell you if I fuck girls?"

"What? No!" Who said anything about fucking? "I just ... you act like ... I thought you ...."

"You thought everybody's gotta want some of you," Faith said, sidling closer. Then she was right up close, kissing her, and it was weird because they were the same height and Faith's mouth was soft, her jaw small, she smelled all wrong, and yet Buffy's body responded with that inner kick that made her want more. Despite that, she pulled back.

It was weird. It was weird because when she'd felt Faith's mouth on hers, her slipping tongue, it was Spike her mind fell against. His mouth, his body, she'd grown so used to them, not in a bored way, but in an exciting gotta have more more more way. And even though she hated him now and would be dusting him soon, all of that was still inside her, messing her around.

Faith was staring. Her eyes reflected the moonlight. "You haven't kissed anybody since Angel, huh?"

Buffy didn't know how to answer this question, until she realized she didn't have to answer it at all. Grasping Faith's face, she took another try. The second time was better--she concentrated not on what wasn't there, but what was. Faith was all curvy and peachy and strong and her hair felt kind of great, and ....

"Yo, wait a mo'," Faith gasped. "Probably shouldn't just give the vamps a free show."

"Vamps where?" She fisted her stake. She hadn't felt the proximity of any vamps.

"Nah, just, any that might turn up." They'd killed a few earlier in the evening but here in Crestview anyhow it was quiet.

Now it was Buffy's turn to hand out the narrowed eye. "You didn't think I would, did you?"

Faith glanced away. "You gonna be one of those girls who's all tease, I'm not playin'. Otherwise, we know where we can go."

An hour later Buffy lay staring at the blinking fairy lights Faith had strung up around her motel room, listening to the gush of water in the bathroom. She was slightly stunned. To the extent she'd ever thought about what women did together in bed, she'd imagined it all soft sighing fluttery touches and gentle little gasps. Turned out that--why was it a surprise?--Faith was pretty much just like her, only maybe even more so, because some of what Faith had just done to her wouldn't have ever crossed her mind even if she'd been locked in a room and told she had to write out a list of fifty filthy things to do to another girl before she'd be let out.

Faith reappeared then, wrapped in a towel, wet hair dangling. "Feel better now?"

Why was it no surprise that she didn't go in for cuddling?

Not like Spike. Spike had ... Buffy shoved that thought aside with a shudder she chose to assign to revulsion. "Yeah, I'm okay." She was sore and would certainly bruise, but she'd sure worked off some tension. It was better than nothing. But now she wondered what Faith was thinking.

"Betcha never thought you'd fuck another slayer, right?"

"No, I never did." She was trying to think how she was going to get out of here. Her clothes were all over the place and some of them were torn.

"Was all I thought about, soon's I found out there were two of us." Faith's grin was starry. "And now I know." Dropping the towel, she stepped forward, but Buffy put up a hand.

"Look, we--"

Faith turned her back smoothly, as if she'd meant to all along, and began to root through one of the bureau drawers. "Whatevs."

"OK, so ... uh ...." Buffy got up, and began looking for her jeans. "Are you still planning to move into our guestroom?"

Suddenly Faith was laughing. "You're smart, B. Really smart."

"I--what?"

"Gettin' your Mom to invite me to live in your house. That was clever, all right."

"I had nothing to do with--wait! You think I wanted--"

Faith gave her a well, duh! look.

"Hey, I don't care what you do. As for this--it was all right but it's not like we're joined at the hip now."

It was clear from Faith's expression that Buffy had stolen her stance.

"So you can come to Revello or not, but it doesn't mean ...."

"Yeah. I got it. It's not like I'm gonna give up cock for you, get a grip."

"I'm not into anything heavy," Buffy pushed on. Her blouse was in two pieces. She reached over Faith's shoulder to snatch a tee-shirt out of her drawer. "You can lend me this, right?"

The air outside the mildewy motel room was cooler. Buffy took some deep breaths as she walked away. Okay, that was ... confusing. What did I just do? She couldn't even sort out who'd hit on whom, and then apart from all the brand-new sensations and the obscure sense of triumph that always suffused her when she'd come a few times in quick succession, Buffy was left feeling ... odd.

Like she'd done something sneaky. Like she'd cheated. Which made no sense, and God, the sooner she could stake Spike the better she'd feel.

Maybe she could find him now. Get it over with. Get it done.

This was SO fucked up.

Monumentally, stupidly fucked up.

After running around searching for him for three nights, she'd finally found Spike.

In some dumb deserted graveyard half-tumbling off a cliff near the beach, where nothing had been buried or risen for thirty years, easy, there he was, leaning on a tombstone smoking a cigarette and apparently gazing up at the full moon like a huge dork.

And they'd been fighting for what felt like a good twenty minutes, just tossing each other around like a big idiotic game of hackey-sack, running up bruises and getting off zingers and accomplishing absolutely nothing.

She couldn't understand it. The stake was in her fist. She'd had a clear shot at his heart at least four times, and each time she'd ... she'd pulled some other maneuvre instead of driving it home.

And he was all fanged out and slavering, and a couple of times he'd had a chance to sink his teeth in her, only ... he hadn't.

This was pissing her off.

Something about it was making her eyes smart, and her chest clench.

"What is the matter with you!"

She's scrambled up to the roof of a crumbling mausoleum, and knelt there, catching her breath, looking down into his charged and glowing eyes.

"Nothin's the matter with me, Slayer. Was about to ask you the same thing."

"This ... this is taking too long."

"Got another appointment, have you?"

"No! It's just ..." The stake was in her hand. She could drop down on him right now and just do it.

Only she knew, with a sick upside-down sensation like right before she was going to barf from eating some bad clams, that she wasn't. She wasn't going to stake Spike right here right now.

"You're just fooling around!" she accused.

"Me! I'm waitin' for you to come up with some fight that's worth anything! What's your problem, Miss Anne? Forgotten how to do the necessary?"

"As if."

"Well come on down here then an' gimme it. Gimme a proper fight, so's I can finish you off once an' for all."

She shifted from a kneeling to a cross-legged position.

Spike took a step back, hands on his hips like her mother sometimes stood when she was bawling her out. At this angle he was severely foreshortened, white head in the moonlight, dark shoulders, boot-toes.

"What if I won't? I could ignore you. Maybe I could ignore you to death."

"Not you. Never."

Never? Since when did he think he was so important? He used to be nothing! Just a nuisance. She launched herself from the roof; they hit the ground together with a sharp crack. She delivered a couple of blows to his face--his nose made a satisfying target--before he threw her off.

Words emerged in a sudden burble she wasn't prepared for. "Why didn't you kill me back there? In that motel. Or would that violate some sanctity of the bed that exists only in your stupid vampire mind?"

A slow hot smile lit his face as he regarded her with a parody of concern. "Got my braggin' rights to consider. Makes a far better story if I can say I made you my willin' mistress, then let you go and snuffed you after a fair fight. That'll put me top of the heap all right."

My willing mistress. The words sent a sort of blind flash through her, of rage and--something else. "So--so--so fight!"

"Been fightin'. It's you who--"

She flew at him, knocking him over, going down with him as she felt the stake connect, starting to part flesh, before he fisted her wrist, grinding it sharply off.

She cried out.

"Broke it, did I? Poor little girl."

She flailed out with her left towards the stake lying nearby, but he caught her around the waist, reversing them so he was on top of her, pinning her limbs. Her wrist felt like it was on fire.

"Boo hoo. What a pity. That your wankin' hand?"

His eyes were blue again. The evil sneer was also in abatement, replaced by ... she wasn't sure what kind of expression. Still sitting on her, he took hold of her hand and probed gently at the bones of the wrist.

She wrenched her arm away, gave him a hard shove that tumbled him off. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Just ... makin' sure you're still in the game."

"I'm in it!" She kicked out, her heel connecting with his chin. But when she snatched up the stake again, her wrist flared into fire once more. She couldn't restrain her gasp.

"Need a time out?"

"Shut up."

He picked up the stake, held it out to her. "Go on. Use the other hand."

She stared. He'd tugged his shirt open, so she could see his chest, smooth and white in the silver light, except for the one point where she'd nicked him a minute ago. A drop of blood oozed from the place like a tear.

There wasn't a spot on him she hadn't touched. With her hands. With her lips. She'd felt herself in possession of him, and it had been ... like nothing she'd ever dared to imagine, before.

Until he betrayed her.

Like the demon he was.

"When ... when did it happen?"

Spike tilted his head, regarding her with his cool clear gaze.

"You must know. Been thinkin' of nothing else all this time, I'm sure."

"I want you to tell me."

"Remind you how fierce an' sweet an' hot you were for me, even after my soul was gone?"

Her heart was hammering, and the flush of shame ran through her hot as lava. What was this?

"Why did you call my mother?"

To her surprise, it was now Spike who averted his eyes.

"If you wanted to fight me--kill me--why wait?" She moved closer to him. His coat gave off its familiar aroma of old leather and cigarettes, that for a split second hit her like a homecoming.

"Wanted you to be afraid first. Wanted it to hurt."

"I'll never be afraid of you."

"You sure about that?"

"I'm sure." It was half true. He was no threat to her mortality. But even as she denied him, a forboding chill crept through her. She was afraid, of what he'd done to her life. How he'd turned her into someone who didn't fit anymore. Someone lonely and alone. That did hurt.

Spike's stare went right through her. She wasn't sure how long they stared at each other, or who moved first. But the next moment they locked together, in a clumsy harsh embrace of fists and struggle, as she pummeled and kicked at him, tight and close, words pouring out that she hadn't let herself say except at the edges of sleep when her defenses were softest. They scuffled, his eyes going gold and then dimming, blood running from one nostril, from the corner of his mouth. Then they were sprawled again on the hard ground, she was shaking hard, wrung and sobbing, even as she was still trying to hit him, trying to force all her agony onto his face and body. Her wrist throbbed, and she was blind now with tears, so that at first she didn't understand what else was happening, that he was rocking her, pressing kisses on her drowning eyes and gasping mouth.

"Christ Christ Christ," he murmured, visiting each part of her face with his moist lips. "This is no good. This is no good. Hush now, Miss Anne. Hush."

"I hate you!"

"Hate you double, poisonous little bitch. Hush. God, you're so warm."

"What--what--what are you doing?"

"Ssssh. Here's your stake." He put it back in her hand as if restoring a toy to an insecure child. She squeezed it in her fingers even as she was burying her own mouth in his neck, into that place under the sharp square box of his jaw that she liked, where her licks made him shiver.

They'd both stopped moving. Spike held her tight. He wasn't breathing, and she'd reined in her sobs, so now she could hear the sea, away below, as the tide was changing, stirring up against the rocks with hard slaps, roaring in and out, sounding closer and closer.

She wrenched herself away. Spike stayed where he was while she got to her feet.

His eyes were fixed on her face, unflinching, glittering out of the gathering lumps and bruises she'd inflicted. He watched her, and waited. She tested the wooden point against her denimed thigh.

The stake felt alive in her fist. She couldn't let him walk away from this melt-down. Couldn't risk that he'd tell others about it. That he'd taunt her with it the next time they met.

Now, now, now. Finish it. She picked up her foot, drove it against his shoulder so he was sprawled beneath her.

Spike licked the streaked blood from his lips. "Slayer. Listen."

No. No talking. Just lie there and get staked.

"'M sorry."

At first the words, barely audible, meant nothing. Just sounds that ricocheted around in her brain.

He sat up slowly, cradling his head for a moment like he had a hangover, like he was sick. She let him do that. Let him stand. She didn't know why. "Didn't know how it would be, when I sent you off."

No no no this is SO not happening. She kicked out, so a clod of dirt and grass flew up and thumped him in the throat.

"Oh, very nice!" Spike said, brushing the soil off his clothes. "Tryin' to say something here! Would you just listen!"

"So--so talk!" She was trembling all over, her wrist on fire.

Frowning, he jammed his hands in his jeans pockets. "Got my soul out, thought I'd be right again, be free. But I can't hunt, can't kill, not a one since I left you! Came here, thought slaughterin' you would fix me up ... but I see it won't. All's I feel is ...." He pulled his hands out, lifted them helplessly. Then his eyes flashed, heat-lightning on a hot still night. Voice dropping into an accustory growl. "It's not just me. You feel it too."

"I don't know what you mean." Her whole body flushed and flared, wild conflicting urges to flee, to throw herself against him, ran through her like shocks. He had to be onto that, he could smell her thoughts. Still she tried to sell him the line she was only barely buying herself. "Anyway, why should I believe anything you say? Why should I ever trust you again? Not--not--not that I ever did! Not for one red second!"

"Come an' stake me, then. Come on." He drew his shirt open again. Stood foursquare before her, hands tucked behind his back. "Do your job, Slayer."

She couldn't, and he knew that she couldn't, and it killed her, to stand before him unable to control herself, unable to treat him like all the others. The white heat of her humiliation burned across her face, and the backs of her knees, and low down in her belly. It was all she could do to hang onto the stake, in her sweat-slicked hand.

"Spike, get out of here. I mean it. If I see you again, I will use this. If you want to live, leave here."

He looked at her, shoulders back, hands away, his head slowly tilting, lips slowly parting. It was unbearable.

"Spike, go!"

"Not without you, sweetheart."

Oh God oh God oh God. In a little while she could jump off the cliff, dash herself to death on the rocks, for this failure and disgrace. In a little while. But now, in exchange for that appointment, she let the stake fall for the last time, went to him with open hands, and took what she was burning for. His shape in her arms, his mouth on hers. He lifted her up, a grateful crooning coming from his throat, gathering her in past the leather to curl around his body, to smell his subtle aromas and taste his coppery tongue and the quicksilver of his skin. She heard herself groan, and his arms tightened. He balanced her against the top of a stone, a sudden hard chill against her ass.

"I've got you. I've got you," he murmured, when their mouths broke. They were rocking a little, clasped together, but it wasn't sexual--more like they'd snatched each other back from the lip of some cascading disaster, and were questing each other for wounds, enraptured to find each other whole.

Buffy gasped. "How can I believe--"

"Believe what? Christ you smell good."

"I can't trust that you haven't ... I mean, I mustn't trust a word you say. You're a vampire. I can't do this!"

Without the soul, what was he? How could this be happening? How could she, despite her protests, be doing it anyway? Her fingers combing through his crisp soft hair, tugging his head down, keeping his wonderful mouth close to hers. Her eyes were shut so tight that crazy colors were going off in the black.

Then Spike's hands were cupping her face, his thumbs gliding across her lashes, so she had to open and look at him.

"Deception's never been my vice. I telegraph everythin' I'm up to a mile away, you know that."

"I don't," she murmured, but she thought, I'm the one who lies. Who's full of awful secrets.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, as if to absolve her. "Told myself I'd kill you first, an' then it would all come good. But you've ruined me for all of that. Blown it to bloody bits."

It occurred to her, with a horrified fascination, that she might have stayed with him all this time, in a state that seemed in retrospect like such bliss, if only he'd let her. Without knowing anything was different, if he'd gone on treating her the same way, being the same way. Nothing like Angel-into-Angelus. Stranger, maybe. More sly. Or ... or she didn't know what. There was nothing in her slayer training to account for any of this.

But she'd still be with him. And maybe she'd have guessed the soul was gone, only if nothing was ever explicitly said, by either of them ... Oh no. Oh no I can't be this person. I can't do this.

This was unthinkable. She refused to think about it. She needed action.

She started tugging at his clothes.

"Slayer--you hearin' me?"

"Shut up!"

"Oi--listen--"

"If you want me to stay here, you have to shut up!" She'd yanked his shirt up from his jeans, and was struggling with his belt.

Spike was frozen, so that for a long moment she was afraid he was going to argue, or pull away. But then his hands covered hers, making the belt buckle and the fly buttons come away, helping her to what she wanted even as he got to work on her own. In a moment she was tipped back on the top of the stone, her naked legs wrapping around him, his rising cock prodding her inner thigh as she caught his mouth again with hers. Kisses like the first gasps of air after near-drowning. His fingers, cool and just slightly rough at the tips, explored her sex, spreading her moisture up and out, teasing her clit with little flicks. She pushed yearningly against his hand, his thigh, his erection that was right there but not inside her yet, reaching for it even as she held on to him with the other arm around his neck.

"Spike--please--"

When he entered her, drawing her legs well up under his arms, tipping her back, the wet rocks below flashed again in her mind, as if they were rising to meet her plummeting body. Then they were gone, replaced just by him, his eyes intent on her, his panting growling mouth, the cheeks sucked in as he took her, slow and possessive.

"Oh," he said. "Oh." He sounded like he'd vastly underestimated his need. Awe and reverence.

She'd thought she needed it fast and hard enough to obliterate all consideration, all doubt. But he made it something else, and she couldn't resist the languorous pace he set, or the fascination of hanging in his gaze. His eyes seemed to devour her, to gather everything she hadn't realized about herself, didn't want to admit, into their comprehending depths. He was strangely quiet--she'd already forgotten that she'd demanded that.

She wished this would never stop. She couldn't believe she'd done without this, lived as if she'd never have it again. She must've been half dead an hour ago, without this.

Without him.

Slow, slow, in and out, slick and wet and full.

"Sweet. Sweet. Sweet." He whispered into her mouth, like feeding her little bites of what she so hungered for. She answered him in kitten moans, all she could manage, trying to draw this out, to keep its perfection from breaking.

She didn't even want to come, because that would make it over. She couldn't imagine what could possibly be after this. Nothing good.

Nothing else ever ever ever good, after this.

"Spike. Spike. Oh God, please. Just bite me." What better way to end this terrible trouble? To die of him.

He moved her, laid her on the ground without uncoupling, covered her, buried his mouth in her neck as he took his deep slow toe-curling thrusts, making her ripple and flush, weep and beg. But the change, the bite, didn't come. Instead he urged her, even as she struggled against it, to an upswell of pleasure that she couldn't parse from despair.

She couldn't think of the last time she'd cried so much in front of someone else. Much less him, this demon, the hated enemy. He kissed her, drinking her tears, petting and stroking her. When she could see him again, he was smiling. Enjoying her distress.

How could he do this to her? Reject her, and then return only to reject her again?

She didn't know she'd spoken, in the midst of her sobs, until he answered her. "Didn't I just love you right?"

She wanted to show her fury, to punish him for not ending this for her. But all she could produce were these rolling sobs. "No. No. No. No."

He held her, twined by arm and leg. His face right up close to hers. "Thing is, I didn't know. Didn't know I was all yours. Got nothin' to do with the soul, Slayer. It's you."

"I can't do this." Already she was feeling the chill on her bare flesh, the juices of their exertion drying. The moon had shifted its position. She couldn't stay here forever in his arms, not even for another hour. She'd have to go home, where her mother was, where Faith was, and in the morning she'd have to go to school again and deal with GilesWesleyXanderWillowOzCordyohnopleasenopleaseno.

Spike smoothed her breeze-whipped hair. "Come away with me, Miss Anne. Let's just go. I'll take you to Mexico, like we'd planned, or anywhere."

"Stop it."

"Know you're not happy here. Why won't you come away with me?"

Buffy only shook her head. Her lashes were still webbed with tears, but when he drew her head down again against his shoulder, she offered no resistance, cuddling closer.

"None of this was in the brochure," he murmured. "Slayer havin' dominion over vampire's souls. Over their hearts. Undone me, you have. Ripped me up an' ruined me." He didn't know how to feel, how to cope with this pitch of tenderness mixed as it was with a needling fury too. She was so powerful. Her power drew him and repelled him, inspired and terrified. And yet she'd just shown him at the same time all her womanly warmth, the part that was just Buffy Summers, a girl who for reasons unfathomable could not refuse him. The sheer simple sweetness of that swamped him, struck his mind dumb even as it filled with tangled curlicues of praise he longed to purr into her ear. He'd been so sure before he knew all about love, but this showed him up for an amateur.

He wasn't prepared for how she moved him. Her raw turmoil, unrestrained by pride, her breathless capitulation to desire. So tightly had he screwed himself to the idea of revenge for poor Dru, making up for his losses and getting his evil on, that he'd missed completely how lost he was to her. Not until he began to fight her did he understand that he was never going to kill her--that all he wanted was to touch her, to have all her attention. That being near her again gave him the sensation of fitness he'd been galloping after all this time.

But then he'd always been one who went in for self-delusion. It was self-delusion that turned him undead--the last and largest delusion of a whole deluded life.

"No." She pushed him away. "This is so fucked up! You hate me. You're supposed to want to kill me. You're evil." It almost sounded like a plea.

"Evil, yeah."

"This isn't going to happen again."

Dressed again, she broke into a run without another word, without even a parting look. Propped on his elbow, Spike watched her sprint away and vault the cemetery wall. Her scent lingered for a moment on the air, but she didn't reappear. Just gone. He picked himself up, glancing around for anything she might've left behind, deliberately or by accident, that he could seize on to keep until he saw her again. He would see her again. There was no question of obeying her, if obedience meant departure.

Her panties, torn into one unwearable strip, had fallen off behind the tombstone. He grabbed up the silky bit of nylon, brought it to his nose for a long grateful sniff before stuffing it into his pocket.

She stayed home the next night. Faith went out to patrol.

The next morning when she woke before dawn, there, balanced on the sill of the bedroom window she'd left open, was a flattish pink box, inside of which, wrapped in pink tissue, were seven silk bra-and-panty sets, each one a different color.

"You are sick," she said, out loud as if he was there to hear her.

Later at school, reading over Giles' shoulder, she saw an item in the local paper about a break-in at the lingerie shop on Main Street. Goods stolen, but the cash register untouched.

That evening, after sitting through dinner with her mother and Faith, who still seemed to be eating for two, she went up to her room and retrieved the box from under the mattress where she'd hidden it.

She put on the black set, and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Scooped her hair up onto her head and gave herself a pouting air kiss. The things fit her, but they made her look like someone she didn't recognize. Didn't want to recognize. All day she'd been thinking back to the summer. To what she'd done in and out of that mysterious townhouse, with the swimming pool in the basement and the manservant who blinked at nothing. She remembered how she'd tied Spike up and left him while she played softball for hours in the park. Remembered how she'd lived with him, and lived on him, for all those weeks with barely a thought about where it was all coming from, who paid for the upkeep of that house, and that servant, who paid for the air conditioning and the clear rippling pool and the lovely meals she'd eaten. Where the money came from later on for the gasoline, for the motel room where they'd rolled around in the bed all day, feeding off each other's endlessly recurring need.

She took off the bra and panties and folded them up. At the bottom of the box she found the thing she'd missed--a card with the address of a motel out on the coast road, in the next town down, the room number scrawled on the back.

So that's where he was. She brought the silken things with her when she went.

When she knocked, the sun was setting, casting long slanting orange beams right under the overhang, throwing her shadow up tall against the door.

Spike opened it without letting the light touch him, retreating at once into the dim room. His hair stood on end, and he was naked. The bedclothes were twisted half onto the floor; she saw a bottle of Jack and a glass on the nightstand.

"I'm giving these back." She put the box down on the dresser, averting her eyes from his body.

"Chose those out special for you."

"They're stolen."

"Well, yeah. Broke in there an' chose 'em out of the shop's whole stock, to please an' adorn you. Girl like you shouldn't wear nylon."

"I'm not going to wear them, and I'm not pleased."

"Was afraid you'd take that line."

"Yet you stole the things anyway."

"You move me to extravagant gestures. Always have." He sidled around in front of her. "Why won't you look at me? Seen it all already. Or does my beauty dazzle you?"

"Spike ... we can't do this."

"Haven't killed since the soul. Barely even put a hurt on anyone. Haven't so much as fed off a woman, or anyone delicate. Just stout young fellows can well spare me a pint. So there's no reason why we can't be together."

"I can't listen to these excuses."

"Excuses! Goin' away together was your idea in the first place."

"But then you set me straight. You reminded me of who I am. You sent me back here--to the hellmouth--to be the slayer. Which I am."

Later she thought about how she would've gotten out, if only she'd walked out then. Instead she hesitated, just long enough for him to come up tight behind her, his hands on her shoulders, his mouth questing through her hair to touch the nape of her neck. Once that happened she couldn't help the shiver that ran through her, couldn't help throwing her head back against his shoulder, or rolling it as he gathered her hair up, laying soft kisses in a trail along her hairline, to her jaw, her cheek, so that her mouth was right there to open against his.

"Thought you'd come here last night. Looked around for you in the usual spots after I did my bit of shopping, then came back here. Waited for you."

"I ... I stayed in last night. With my mother. We ... we baked."

"Where's my cupcake, then?"

"Spike--"

"Saw the other, though. Faith. She's a pistol, she is. Will get herself killed, goin' off half-cocked the way she does."

"You saw--"

He put a finger on her lips. "She didn't see me. An' she won't. Will make sure of that. She's got plenty else to keep her busy."

"Spike, this is crazy."

"Say you love me, Miss Anne."

She looked into his face, and tried to think when it had happened. With all the individual days and nights she could recall in such detail from those summer weeks with him, she couldn't pinpoint the moment when it happened, when she, who'd thought there could never be anyone else after Angel, had fallen in love again.

Another vampire. Another enigma. Only even worse than before.

"No one else understands you like I do. Tailor-made for you, I am. Better say it to me, as its the truth," he prompted, his tone gentle and ruthless. She was pressed against him, all the way down, his bare skin against her clothes, his bare feet beside her boots.

He did understand her, but she had to make him see that he didn't completely understand this. "That doesn't matter."

"Matters to me. Love you, an' won't be denied. Say it."

Amidst all her resistence, it turned out to be a relief, just to admit it. Pressing her lips to his breastbone, she whispered. "I love you, Spike."

His eyes were sharp, observing her, knowing her, full of tenderness but not, she saw with a pang, of mercy. He would spare her nothing.

"Well, well. So what are we to do, then?"

"Nothing. There's nothing."

He sprawled on the bed, his patient, unflinching gaze fixed on her. And despite her denial, she began slowly take off her clothes, jeans and top and plain cotton bra and another pair of the nylon panties that were all she had. She was throbbing for him, and once more she felt like crying.

"Bloody gorgeous you are."

"Please don't talk."

"Don't you shut me up. Gorgeous, an' powerful you are, all small an' neat an' deadly. But then you're just my little Miss Anne, with your big eyes, all trembling with sweetness, and it's that I love best. Come here an' let me worship you."

She sidled closer to the bed. "What are you going to do?"

"Whatever you like best."

She knew what she would've liked best at that moment. If he'd just gather her into his arms, hold her in his lap, rock her a little, humming against her neck. Keep that up until she was calm and quiet, and then just simply drain her.

That still seemed like the only way out of this mess. But he'd already said that wasn't on the cards, and talking about it any more would make the desire too real. She was ashamed of it, it felt cowardly and weak. He'd think so too.

And she couldn't understand why she could yearn to die at his hands, but couldn't bring herself to get into the car with him again, and just go.

She climbed up on the bed, let him lay her out, let him kiss and nibble every bit of her, murmur his profane praises to her breasts, her belly, her ass, let him tease gasps and groans out of her, and then harsh sharp cries. When she couldn't bear any more, she pushed him away, her breath ragged, skin slick with sweat. Kneeling beside her, still cool and dry, his cock standing in his lap, he looked at her.

He was always looking at her. Watching her.

When she could breathe without gulping, she said, "Tell me the truth."

"I do, always."

"You really haven't killed anyone, since--?"

He made an oath gesture. "Honor bright."

"But you've hurt people. You admit you've fed, and I really doubt your every meal was off one of those submissive sickos in a fang bar."

"Well, that's true too. But I didn't hurt anyone much. Most of 'em are drunken yobbos who never know what's goin' on until it's over."

"And you've robbed. You're really no better than--"

"Than I ever was?" That sarcastic little simper that made her want to deck him. "I'd say I'm a little better."

"This is not a joke!"

"Didn't want to change, did I! Your fault I'm like this! When I want to hunt, to kill, when the urge is all hot in me, I see you, and I can't do it."

"That's nothing to be proud of! Loving me doesn't make you a real man, and loving you doesn't help me with anything I have to do! Anything I have to be. Anyhow, this can't really be love. It's just ... the hots."

He went grave. "We both know better'n than that, Slayer."

She wished he'd come up with something to tell her that would be a way out, because the sight of him, even sated as she felt now, made her ache with longing. She was already lonely for him even though he was right there with her. It defied understanding, this love. She hadn't understood it when she'd felt it for Angel, all that need and anguish, and it was no clearer now. Except that Spike had no soul anymore, and therefore wasn't worthy of being loved by her or anybody, which just made it all worse, because her heart wouldn't listen to such clean logic.

"If that's all it was," he murmured, as if he was explaining some little problem in logic, "could take you an' turn you. Be your sire, like Dru was mine, an' have you forever. But that won't do. Won't do at all."

"Yeah, well, I've got to go. I have to patrol before I do my homework." Springing up, she began to dress.

He matched her. "Come with you. Watch your back."

"Want to do my French verbs too?"

"Will if you like. Can talk French like a real Frenchie."

"You can?"

"An' plenty else besides. Will do your bloody homework if you'd like."

A laugh burst out of her. "I think you mean it!"

He flared, his eyes flashing. "I do! Nothin' to laugh at!"

But she couldn't help it. She laughed, and after a few seconds he did too, and she was able to go to him and kiss him and stand in his arms for a few more moments of postponing the parting she dreaded so much. "After all that," she said, indicating the rumpled bed, "you didn't come."

"Did, only you didn't see. Your thrashings an' your spunk in my mouth brought me off."

"You ..." She didn't know how to tell him how he satisfied her, all the phrases that came into her mind seemed to be plucked from pop songs she'd heard on the radio, and she couldn't speak them. "I'll suck you off before I go."

"Before we go. You're not rid of me so quick. An' never mind, keep it for later. After I've learned you your French verbs."

"How do you say 'I want your cock in my mouth' in French?"

Dru had certainly been moody, going from laughter to tears in the space of a heartbeat, but then she'd been mad as an experienced hatter. Buffy wasn't mad, but she was certainly capricious. She'd come in all doomy, stayed that way all through their lovemaking, and now it was over, here she was all flirty.

It's 'J'ai envie d'avoir ta bite dans la bouche.'"

"Zhay envy devour tah beet don la boosh."

"D'avoir. Not devour. Though suppose it comes to the same thing."

"I know 'bouche' so I guess the beet part is the cock."

"Spelled like bite." As soon as he said it, Spike wished he hadn't. The whole biting thing was still hanging between them--unmentioned this time but not, he was pretty sure, forgotten by her any more than it was forgotten by him. He hastened to add, "An' the French for cunt is 'con'. Or 'la chatte'."

"Pussy."

"Exactly."

"Well, aren't you a fount of filthy information." She squinted at him, like she was trying to figure something out. And then she was on her knees, yanking his buttons open again. "J'ai envie d'avoir ta bite dans la bouche. Dans ma bouche."

And what a bouche she had on her, and what a pair of hands. She'd learned him, during their weeks together, she knew how he liked it, and went at him hard, eyes squeezed shut like she needed simultaneously to pretend she wasn't doing what she was doing with such gusto.

"Christ, yeah. Yeah, that's brilliant. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." He thrust into her encircling hands, into her mouth, legs trembling as he went up and over.

She sat back on her heels, running her tongue into the corners of her mouth. "Sometimes I wonder what the Good Slayer Fairy would say if she could see me."

"Who's that?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant as he did up his buttons.

"I made her up. Just now. She's like the Tooth Fairy, only she's the one who anoints the slayers. She comes in when you're asleep and taps you with her glittery wand and you wake up all strong and angsty and ready to kill vampires and also tear yourself in two over them."

"Them?"

"Well, certain ones. He-whose-name-we-don't-seem-to-be-saying-to-each-other-anymore-and-that's-just-fine-thank-you. And now you. Which better be all. Because it already looks like one of those unfortunate habits."

He opened his mouth to say he wasn't going to be anybody's goddamn unfortunate habit, but Buffy again looked so miserable--the playfulness of a few moments ago gone as quickly as it arose--that he held back. She went to the door.

"I have to go now. By myself."

"An' what am I supposed to do?" The idea of a threat leapt forward--telling her he'd go out and kill a dozen blighters if she left him. That was the kind of coercive drama he and Drusilla traded back and forth, jealousy waxing and waning, keeping their passion engaged across the decades. But he sensed that wasn't going to brighten her love-light any, and besides, it wasn't like he was actually going to do it. He wanted to. Only he was certain he'd never be able to keep it a secret from her, and she'd never touch him again if she knew he was unleashed. When he thought that he never ever again could look forward to a good satisfying kill, drinking some punter's blood down 'til he expired, it made him want to throw over love altogether.

Kill the bitch and just get on with it. Maybe there'd be some other vamp girl would come along, who'd take Drusilla's place in his heart and his car and his bed, and everything would go back to normal.

Kill the bitch, yeah. Same one who, having grasped the door knob for a moment, was now ricocheting back to him, all warm and quivering and mewing sadly, adorably, as she slipped her arms around his neck. "Kiss me so I know you're not mad," she murmured, as if she'd read his mind and as if she had absolutely no remote idea that he'd ever made her death his business. She knew, she knew, but love made her forget. Made her want to forget it.

Kissing her made him want to forget it too.

"Okay, look," she said, when they'd kissed and kissed and kissed again. "come with me if you want."

"If I want?"

"I want you to. I just--"

"Think you shouldn't."

"Yeah." She plucked at his shirt with her little fingers. "God. Why does this have to be so hard?"

Fucking hell. Whoever said being in love made you happy needed his head examined.

The only time he'd been happy since Angelus came back, was with the slayer in New York. A happiness he hadn't recognized as such, until they'd achieved that moment of perfection that whisked the soul out of him and supposedly set him free. Free, all right, free to be anxious, lonely, angry, stuffed full of longing for a girl who was far far far too good and strange for him, far above him.

He hadn't known when he was well off.

"So, I know something."

Buffy jumped; the looseleaf binder full of French slid off her lap. Faith climbed in through her open window and plopped down beside her on the bed. Outside, the birds were just starting to twitter ahead of the sunrise.

"What are you doing?"

"Lost my key, and my room is too hard to climb into."

"Your room."

"Your Mom said so."

"At least she's still my Mom."

"Your Mom, right. Is yours." Faith dropped back onto her elbows, which made her breasts stand up between her pert saucy face and Buffy's eyes. Reminding her that she'd kind of liked Faith's breasts, which was pretty much a surprise. And even though that was before Spike turned up, they were still pretty interesting. "You're not like everybody thinks you are, are you, B?"

"I guess not. I ... had kind of an intense summer."

"Riiiiight. That big out-of-town adventure you don't talk about."

Buffy yawned, stretching her mouth and arms open extra wide for emphasis. "Think I want to get an hour's sleep before school."

"You're tired, sure. Just had a busy night. With your hot new squeeze. Who, oh surprise, turns out to be a vampire. Another vampire."

Buffy goggled. No. No way. No way was this happening. To cover, she leaned over to grab up the notebook. When she came back up, Faith gave her a cool smile, and pointed to the back of the neck. "You know how I know. Feel 'em here, yeah? That little ripple that let's you know there's demon makin' the scene. So. Blond hair, black leather ... must be Spike, right? Your pals told me about Spike. What I hadn't heard was that you were screwing him too."

"I ... am ... not ...."

Faith blinked slowly, her face all sultry and impressed. "Nah, don't bother. Saw you, couple hours ago. He had you pinned up against a tree. You were grunting. It was really somethin'--got me all excited. Maybe I was a little jealous, too."

"Oh." Buffy turned a few pages in her notebook.

"So what is it with vampires? Love staking 'em myself, gets me all horny as we've already discussed, but never occurred to me to do one." Faith flopped forward then, chin propped on hands, eyes open wide in mocking attention. "School me, B. What am I missing?"

"I really don't know what you're talking about."

"Drop the bullshit. You're Buffy the vampire layer. You don't get to do that and not share the gory details."

"So what is this? You're going to tell on me if I don't put out for you again?"

"Whoa! Rush to judgment much?"

"Could you maybe get out of my room?"

"What if I did rat on you?"

"I don't know. What if you did? I'm not gonna quake because you want to blackmail me. But if you hurt me or Spike, I will hurt you."

Faith rolled off the bed onto her feet. "You got me wrong, B."

"I do? Because it sure feels like you're threatening me."

"I'm not your enemy. We should look out for each other. I just want to know what you're up to. We're both slayers, but you--you're into some different kind of shit."

"What I'm into is none of your business. Isn't it enough that you're living in my house and bogarting my Mom and my friends, without ...." She knew this wasn't fair. If anything, Faith was providing welcome cover, taking up their attention in ways she no longer had the energy or inclination for. Not that logic made that any less irritating.

Faith paced up and back, her arms crossed, shoulders hunched. When she spoke next, she was facing the wall. "I don't ... I'm not used to ...."

Watching her, it came to Buffy suddenly, with a jolt. Faith wanted to be friendly, but she didn't know how to relate to her without being competitive and over the top.

She probably had never had any friends before. Except maybe her watcher, who Kakistos murdered.

"It's okay," Buffy said. "Let it go."

Faith turned, her eyes widening for a moment that divulged her eagerness, before the mask slipped back into place. "I'm not gonna squeal on you. Slayer's honor. I'm just askin' what's the what, B. I heard Angel was supposed to have a soul, 'til he lost it, I know you haven't gone rogue or anything, but what with everything your pals told me about Spike--"

"You don't want to know! You shouldn't ... you shouldn't think about it, okay? You're good. You're still good."

"Good?"

"You haven't messed up, you have the mission, you're ... straight. Okay? Can you just go on being that, and--"

"You think I'm good? Are you sure you're okay, B?"

"I can handle it."

"Because if this Spike has something on you, if he's on your back--I can get rid of him for you."

"I told you, leave him alone. He's not ...." She couldn't bring herself to say he's not evil. She couldn't even tell herself, let alone Faith, that she trusted him. But the idea of him as a target for Faith's stake filled her with a sense of outrage and injustice, and the same panicky fear she'd experienced when Spike had put Angel in peril of his existence.

Which gave her the biggest whanger of a headache ever.

"Right, like you keep sayin', he's not gonna do anything, and he's about to leave town. I got it."

"I know it's weird, but ... I appreciate you trusting me."

Faith's lip curled. "I've never really trusted anybody, which is kind of a hoot since my name's, you know. But yeah, like I said, slayers should stick together, as long as there's two of us to stick. I won't rat you out."

"Thanks. I'd better hit the shower now, it's almost time for school."

Faith gave her another long look, that Buffy forced herself to endure, smiling a little, trying to appear altogether less desperate and confused and overwhelmed than she felt.

At the door, Faith paused. "If I was you, I wouldn't see him anymore out in the boneyards like you did--your friends might get wise. They were out looking for you tonight too. They keep talking about how you're never around anymore."

Oh God. Before Buffy could come up with another excuse, plea, expression of gratitude, her mother's alarm clock was going off, its noise muffled through the closed door, and Faith was gone into her own room with a click of the latch.

The phone ringing on the bedstand woke him from a luscious blood-soaked dream, in which his fangs were sunk deep in hot yielding flesh. His first instinct was to ignore it. Ringing phones were never for Dru and him. Sometimes she'd answer a victim's phone, talk nonsense to the confused or outraged twat on the other end, maybe sing a song down the line, but he always discouraged it. Could lead to the arrival of police, who had a way of rushing a party.

But this ringing went on and on, and when he picked it up, the silence on the other end told him it was her.

He heard her breathing. Heard her struggling with herself. Irritation--stubborn little cunt she was, always, always!--mixed with tenderness that thickened his throat. He sat up, scratching his head.

"You all right, Slayer?"

" ... no."

It must've been around four; he'd gone to sleep on the hope that she'd turn up again in the late afternoon, when she'd done with school, and climb into bed with him again, smelling like teen-girl shampoo and power and her persistant simmering desire.

He didn't know how to talk to her on the damn phone.

"Get over here, then, an' I'll look after you."

"I'm not coming there any more. Spike, listen to me. Faith knows about us. You have to go. I'm serious."

She'd been serious all the previous times she'd told him to leave, and he wasn't going to take that any more seriously than the others. So the other slayer was on to her? So what? If she came after him he'd do for her, lickety-split--there wasn't going to be any weird unexplainable x-factor with this other girl to make him hesitate. End of story. But he wouldn't leave her. He couldn't imagine an existance anymore without her.

"An' what'll you be stayin' for?"

"Please, I can't go over this again. It's too hard."

"You sit tight 'til tonight an' I'll come round an' collect you in the car. We'll be in Mexico by mornin'. There's demon's aplenty for you to exercise yourself on, in Mexico. I'll keep you up to scratch, I'll have a whip-hand like a fuckin' proper Watcher, you'll see."

A high nervous giggle sounded down the line. Then more silence.

"Love ... come over here. Lemme see you. Can't talk this way."

"I can't do this again. I can't bear it. Don't you understand?"

"Know you love me. Know there's nothing else matters."

"Well, I don't know it! What happened with Angel ... about killed me. And then in New York, when we ... all the time we were together doing ... what we did ... it couldn't last, it wasn't meant to, it was crazy. You were using me to lose your soul and when it worked--"

"You didn't know, did you? You didn't know it happened, and was me who was an idjit sendin' you away."

"I can't go through this twice. Do you have any idea how much this hurts?"

"Told you I wasn't like him. An' I'm not, am I? Love you the same with or without this bloody soul. What is it? Near's I can figure, it's just a lot of hop-la 'bout guilt an' recrimination that does nobody any good at all. Told you I'm off the sauce an' that's all there is to it. Why can't you see that?"

"I can't trust you. Not anymore. You think you're just the same, but you're not. When you had your soul ... What? Yeah. I'll be right there. Listen, they're calling me. I have to go. I'm on the payphone at school."

"You know you're gonna tear your pretty heart out if you do this. For no good reason! Buffy, wait--"

The line went dead.

An' round an' round we go. Havin' the same argument over an' over.

In the bathroom, he splashed his face with cold water. What, he wondered, would she be like as a vampire? He'd never thought about it before, except to dismiss it in the same unanalytical way he rejected anything that was good once but now was decayed and revolting. Buffy Summers turned wouldn't be Buffy Summers anymore.

"Why? Why do I do this? Always fucked up over a woman? Why can't I be a bloody loner?"

Two hours went by. Three. No Buffy. He went to her house, saw Joyce inside the lighted kitchen, but no slayer. Went by the Bronze, but didn't go in--wouldn't do for any of her silly little pals to spot him. Stopped in at Willy's for a drink, to wait for it to be late enough for him to feed. At the hour when most of the bars shut, he went on the prowl. Half hoping she'd turn up to intervene, but there was no sign of her, or the other one, and he left his victim lying limp and alive by a dumpster. Circled back to Revello, where her house was dark now.

Then he was slammed face-first against a tree, arm jammed up his back until he cried out.

"What is it about B? I mean, how come vampires never fall all over themselves for me?"

"Guess the undead also prefer blondes."

"She said you were leaving town. Figured what she wasn't telling me was that she was going with you."

"Wasn't telling me either."

She eased up, he turned. Faith's eyes glittered; she gave him a frank once-over. "Gotta say, she does know how to pick 'em."

Spike stretched his arm. The muscle howled, and he'd have liked to howl too, and get into a real take-down with this one. She was pure slayer--oh, nothing like his, but all juicy and potent and fairly gagging for it.

Love made things too complicated. Took away all his fun.

"So she's not planning to run away with you? Or are you just lying to me because that's what vampires do?"

"Not worth lyin' to you. She told me you knew our business."

Faith shrugged. "I wouldn't mind if you took her away. This is all supposed to be mine. The hellmouth, I mean."

Here was a slayer with a different sort of attitude.

"Would if I could."

"Yeah, well. She'll be back soon. Her friends were feelin' all bummed out because they've drifted apart and yadda yadda yadda so they made her go over to Willow's for a big hair-braiding session. I was there but I got bored."

"Was she bored?"

Faith's eyebrow lifted. "She didn't dare walk out. But I'm gonna guess all she was thinkin' about all night was you. What's the matter with you, anyway?"

"Nothin' the matter with me. Kick it an' see."

"Whoa-ho! I've been warned! Hands off B's personal vamp. Just wanta know how this works, vamp makin' the love connection."

"Got fuck-all to do with bein' a vampire, an' if I knew how it worked I'd be able to turn it off an' go my merry way."

"So you're both miserable. Good to know."

"Like the song says, kid, love hurts."

She left him then. He stayed put in the shadows along the side of the house, smoking and smouldering and watching the moon, until the the faint smell of microwave popcorn and Coca Cola alerted him to her approach. She came into his arms without a hesitation, without a word, just a low moan in her throat as she grappled his shoulders, buried her face in his neck.

After a little while she whispered, "I was afraid you'd have really gone."

"You're startin' to piss me off with this push-me-pull-you shite. You stripped away all I had an' all I was an' now it's just you, Miss Anne, you for me. How can you treat me like this?"

Startled, she pulled back and looked at him, her eyes glistening in the moonlight, her mouth a succulent little O.

It hurt, withdrawing his embrace. Hurt to speak that way to her and see how his anger made her gape. But he couldn't hold it in.

"I'm not your bloody yo-yo."

"I ... I don't know how to work this."

"Then let me work it."

"Don't ... you can't ... you'd better not try to clock me and kidnap me."

"All right, will go to Plan B, then." He drew her in again, all warm and just slightly sweaty, in beneath the flaps of his coat. "D'you trust me, Slayer?"

"I'm supposed to say no."

"I'll think on it. Meanwhile, gonna take you back to mine an' give you the fuck you so richly deserve."

Her sweetness made his brain melt. How had this happened, that he'd been given this girl who might as well have been meant for him, programmed to his every susceptibility? Stronger than him, smarter than him, full of earnestness and humor and beauty and all that power that lured him, raised his awareness and his cock and his every love-soaked instinct. She was in him now. She was singing through his sinews.

Amazing that Angelus could bring himself to hate her. She was such a treasure, she should've broken into even his heart.

But Angelus, thank heaven and earth, was gone, and here she was in his room, gasping her pretty gasps, her pretty hair brushing his face and shoulders, shuddering and curling as he tongued her clit. He'd encouraged her to lie back, but she'd insisted on sitting up, saying she felt weird and lonely when she couldn't look at him, and so she was right there as he knelt before her, her head hanging above his, so he could glance up and see her shining pleading eyes and press her flavor back on her in kisses.

She breathed his name over and over, sometimes weeping, sometimes letting out high keening cries, completely involved, completely lost, and then she slipped down off the edge of the bed into his lap, taking him inside, laughing like she was high, making him lost too, in the tangle of her slender arms and her hair and her humid breathing mouth. Her whole body wriggled, milking him, her belly hollowing with each harsh gasp.

Afterwards he pulled her up onto the bed, cuddled her close again, loathe to let go of her, still drawing in her warmth through his nostrils, his skin. She quivered, sniffling still in the aftermath of her sobbing climax.

He kissed her teary eyes. "Gonna cry every time, Miss Anne?"

"Maybe," she hiccuped.

"Wish you'd be happy."

"Happy is what got us into this mess."

"You sure do it for me, sweet. Make me happy like gangbusters." He smoothed her hair back so he could see her face, dappled with blushes, glowing with sweat. She looked right back at him, fingers tracing the lines of his cheeks and nose, as if she couldn't quite believe in their shape, or his presence.

"You thirsty? I'll get you some water."

She let out a crooning groan. "How can you be so good to me, when you're--"

I'm no worse than he was, he wanted to say, except that he didn't want to bring Angel up, didn't want him in her mind. But it goaded him, Buffy's double-standard. Because it was true, and she'd loved Angel despite his past, and okay, he no longer had his soul now, but unlike Angelus, he'd been walking the line--pretty much--even without one.

For her.

"Good to you because I wanna be." He pulled away slowly, rose and went for the water. She stayed where she was, curled, half-hidden in her hair, so beautiful and small-looking and pensive. She got up on one elbow and drank like a child, handing the empty glass back to him, wiping her mouth with her wrist.

He loved watching her drink. Watching her eat, watching her do everything. His whole body pounded with tenderness for her.

She reached for him. "Don't leave me."

"Got you."

She cuddled in again, wrapping a leg across him too.

"I like this."

"An' me."

"Spike ... why won't you bite me?"

This again! He'd hoped she was going to let it go.

"Back in New York, you said ... you said you were waiting for me to ask for it."

"Hush, love. Hush, now. Go to sleep. Or shall I put on the telly?"

"You said I'd want it, and that when I wanted it, it would happen."

"You don't want it, Miss Anne." He was sure she'd never asked this of Angel. And though he remembered as well as she did their conversation about it back at the motel on Long Island, he was certain they were talking now about something else. She wasn't offering him all of herself, whatever she might think. She was petitioning for oblivion.

"I don't see how this can be enough for you."

"Yeah, well, better trust me, that it is. You are. Just need you safe an' sound an' here with me."

"Why?"

He didn't answer, just kissed her for a long time, in a way that didn't feel like happiness or kindness, but like desert thirst and abandonment.

Like what she felt herself.

"I'd better go home."

"I'll drive you."

As the leaves turned and fell into patterns on the lawns of Sunnydale's cemetaries, her life too took on a pattern: brief naps into the dawn, half-awake at school, with Giles and the others, with her mother, letting Faith take up as much space at those latter points of pressure as she pleased, counting the hours until she could go to Spike and be loved. In the eternal momentariness of him, she was able to feel alive--his conversation, full of random observations, grisly, funny, meandering sepia-colored anecdotes; bits of poems he'd tell from his memory, speaking them, unlike her teachers, who only recited; and his love-making, raunchy, worshipful, inventive. She almost always cried while they were together, and always they'd discuss their love in whispers, reassurances she each time promised herself she wouldn't ask for the following night.

One morning just ahead of sunrise, she climbed in her own window to find Faith in her bed. With the lights off, and both hands under the quilt, and her shoulders bare.

"What are you doing in here?"

"You haven't been usin' it."

"Ha bloody ha."

Faith's hands moved under the covers; Buffy followed their bumps with her eyes. "Now you're talking like him? Pretty serious."

"Please stop doing whatever it is you're doing. And I'm not going to talk about Spike right now--I want to get a little sleep."

Faith drew one hand out. The fingers glistened before she popped them into her mouth. "I can't tempt you, huh?"

"Faith--"

"Look, you've got to stop skipping the Scoobie meetings. They're onto you. Willow's noticed an uptick in reports of people with mysterious neck wounds--no casualties. I figured that was your boy, but I kept my mouth shut, said I'd check around. Only thing is, Giles an' Wes sent Xander along with me, so I really had to do the checking. Guess he was trying to impress me when he punched Willy the Snitch. Anyway, Willy gave up Spike."

"Gave up?"

"Sang about him like a whiney little birdie. You'd better get him gone, because Xander's got his panties in a bunch and your little pals are full of plans to find him and finish him off themselves."

"My mom's not going to give you my room. You can forget that." Even as she spoke, Buffy was opening the closet, pulling down her duffle bag, filling it with clothes.

"Don't care about the room."

"Someone with a suspicious nature could think you'd set her up, to get her gone."

"I'm gonna miss you, B. I mean, I'm gonna miss what mighta been." Faith sat up, so the sheet fell away from her breasts. "We might live long enough to meet again. Think so?"

"I'm going rogue, and my lover is a hungry vampire. Figure I'm not long for it, either way. Take my advice--whatever happens, never fuck a vampire. Or ... maybe you could get away with it, because you could fuck one and stake him as soon as it was over." She zipped the bag and straightened up. "That would be the kind of thing you'd do."

"I certainly could, yeah. But all the looky ones seem to look at you first."

She was picking through her jewelry box in order to avoid glancing around at Faith. "I need to write a note to my mom. Will you keep it quiet today that you know I'm gone?"

"I don't know you're goin' anywhere ..." Faith said, her voice silky. She got slowly out of bed. Buffy could see her in the dresser mirror. She sauntered slowly across to the door. " ... so I'm not gonna offer to kiss you goodbye."

"Did you leave a note for your Mum this time?"

"It took me two hours to write. And it was still no good."

"You can ring her when we stop. It'll be all right."

"I know." All right. Nothing is ever going to be all right.

The car windows were blacked over, so there was nothing to look at but Spike himself, driving with his chin thrust out, lip curled in a satisfied smirk, one hand drumming on the wheel, the other draped across the back seat, tapping along with the blaring radio. He could barely contain himself--when she'd knocked on his motel room door a couple of scant hours after she'd left him, saying that she'd changed her mind, that she was ready to go away with him, he'd roused out of his daytime drowse at once, and wouldn't hear of waiting for nightfall, even when she said she wanted to sleep, even when she asked him first to make love to her. "You can sleep in the car, an' we'll fuck all we like when we're well away from here."

The car's interior was hot, even with her window cracked. She stared at the clasp of the glove compartment, trying not to sweat, thinking about the letter she'd written to her mother, in which she'd tried to explain that she couldn't go through the motions of being a minor child anymore, after all she'd done, but that she would always love her and hope to be forgiven. Thinking also about what Giles and her friends would say about her when they realized she'd skipped town ... again. At least this time there was Faith, who would do the job that used to be hers. Faith was the real slayer now, after all--she, Buffy, was an extra one.

She, Buffy, had been dead and maybe that was the source of all the trouble.

If only she could split herself in two. One to stay and playact the old Buffy, and one to rush away into this other world--towards, she couldn't help feeling--some other death.

One way or the other, she thought, the shadow of death was on her. This wildness--loving Angel, leaving home, then this ongoing collision with Spike--couldn't end any other way.

Spike's cool hand curled around her nape. "Thought you were sleepy, sweet. Can turn off the music if you like."

"It doesn't matter."

He turned the volume down. "Sit closer."

She let him gather her in, let her head drop against his shoulder. A thrill of sadness, desire, excitement raced through her, amped her up, whenever he touched her. She kept her hands curled in her lap, against the sharp urge to slide them up under his shirt.

"Where are we?"

"In the desert."

She imagined it, miles of yellowy sere emptiness stretched out on either side of the infinite road the DeSoto tore along. The sun baking it all, no shade anywhere. "Maybe we should've waited until it was dark."

"Used to this, drivin' all day in the open. Been doin' it long as there's been cars."

"It feels chancey, that's all."

"Since when do you shy off of chancey?" He brought her hand up to his mouth, kissed the back of it, and the palm. "We're all right, we are."

"I want us to be."

"Why'd you decide today would be the day, Miss Anne?"

She thought of telling him the truth, that in Sunnydale he was in danger. But since she couldn't tell the whole truth of what was in her heart, what was stirring her around inside with a ceaseless sick churn, she said, "I was tired of hiding you, and what I was doing. I thought it would be better this way."

"You thought right." He snatched her close for a kiss, hard and breathless. He didn't slow, and didn't swerve, and she realized that he was practised at this too. He'd keep the car on the road straight as a die even if she took his cock out and sucked him off. He was in his element.

She was in it with him.

Again.

For a little while longer.

They didn't drive all day. Before three in the afternoon, Spike pulled in to the dusty parking lot of the kind of motel Buffy already thought of as their place--low, obscure, adequate. Anonymous and private.

In many ways: heavenly.

As the miles behind them had piled up, her spirits rose. After all, riding with Spike was irresistible, the way he kept his arm around her, his glances, the lingering introspective kisses he gave her while keeping the car always on the straight-away--the sensation of being his, all unbroken by any other hint. The way he kept her amused with stories--he could be the Scherezade of Vampires, holding off his own slaying with tales, if he tried. Not that she was any real threat to him anymore. She could still worry endlessly that he was no better than any of them and deserved to be slain at once. But it wouldn't be she who would do it. Not while all his little kindnesses rocked her like electrical charges. She was starving for what he had for her. It made no sense but there it was.

In the dim refrigerated little room, no lights on, he undressed her, murmuring into her breasts, raising her arms to nuzzle the warm moist pits, kissing her belly, kneeling at her feet to press his face with an intent restrained sort of connoiseurship into the cleft of her thighs. Her arousal, simmering all day in the humming car, went open-throttle. Unable to await his worship, she toppled him back and took him at a gallop on the floor. It occurred to her to wonder, when, for a few moments at least, she was sated, that she couldn't imagine herself ever doing this to Angel--tearing his clothes, commandeering him for her own whim. It wasn't just that Spike so clearly liked, not just to be posed, molded, topped, but to be bullied. Used. He gave himself to it with abandon. She wasn't sure she'd ever have been able to reveal herself to Angel so completely as she'd already done to Spike. Spike was in on her in a way that no one ever was before. The thought revived her sadness. All her love for Angel, useless without him, was still there in her, and felt so much more worthy than what she had for Spike. So why did it seem less whole?

"I need to learn to drive."

"That would be helpful, yeah."

"Because I'd like to be able to tie you up and throw you in the back. Or the trunk. When I felt like it."

Spike's brow rose. "Ah?"

"Yes. I think that might be interesting, sometimes."

"Can tie me up right now if that's what you've got a hankerin' for."

His good-natured taking in stride of whatever she wanted to do with him licked curiously at her little cruel streak. Images of torment flickered in her head--things that would contort Spike's face out of its present fond mildness. Make him fang out. Make him cry. She didn't know why she wanted that.

"Got ropes, chains, an' all sorts in the car," he said. "Go an' fetch 'em, if you fancy."

She wanted to ask if Drusilla had done that to him. If she'd beaten him. Excitement flared up in her at the idea of beating Spike, not with a whip, exactly, but with something else made of leather, something that would leave a different kind of mark than a hand or a fist. It was easy to imagine Drusilla doing that, not that thoughts about Drusilla were welcome.

"I'd like to fuck you also. The way ... the way you said ..." She didn't want to say Angel's, Angelus' name out loud either. Didn't really want to think of them fucking, but now she knew about it, it would come into her mind.

He smiled. "That can be arranged." He tweaked her breast. "You're quite bossy, I like it. What's come over you?"

"I'm having a good time. We're going to have a good time."

"Oh, we are."

She rose and turned on the lamp, wanting to see better the face from which issued his honeyed voice. There he lay in his torn shirt, ripped-down jeans, his hair pulled up, wet cock collapsed across one thigh. Later on, she would want to think of him just like that. Caught in a moment of being entirely her own. Too bad she couldn't take a photo.

"Tell me something."

His eyes narrowed. "This Truth Or Dare?"

"Yeah, kind of." She knelt beside him. "I want the truth, though."

"Honor bright." His smile mocked the boyish oath, but she knew he meant it.

"Do you still want to kill me?"

"Do I--?"

"I don't mean, are you going to kill me now. I mean, do you want to. In your dreams. Your fantasies. When you're coming inside me, are you biting me too? Am I dying with my blood in your mouth? Are you fucking me as I die?"

Her words seemed to hypnotize him. He stared at her in the low yellow glow of the sixty watt bulb, unblinking.

She waited as the seconds ticked by.

His eyes closed then. "There's ... different ways I think of ...." His cock stirred, as if it wanted to put a word in. Seeing that, she thought, I knew it.

"But I never want you dead. Because I always need you to still be with me when it's finished." His hand came up; she shifted out of reach. "Can't bear idea of losing you. Never again."

She too was transfixed, caught by the straightforwardness of his confession. "Because you love me."

He reached for her again, and this time she came closer, dropping down to straddle his chest. As she pinned him, he looked, head tipped back, eyes shiny, like a saint in some old painting. Which was quite a strange laughable notion.

Ecstatic.

She'd forced the soul out of him, by making him happy.

How did that work? What was it about her, that pleased him so?

"What're you smirkin' for?"

"You love me. You're mine."

"Yeah." He frowned. "Miss Anne ... do you think 'bout killing me?"

"I'm thinking about it right now."

"Does slayin' get you off?"

"No." She slid back, until his renewed erection nestled against her ass. "It really doesn't. This does."

His gaze might burn right through her. "I do?"

"Yes." She leaned back against the hard, slightly curved shaft. Thought of how warm her flesh must feel against him. How rich her aroma must be. "When I think about killing you ... I feel pity."

"For me?"

"For both of us." She leaned forward then, to brush her lips against his. "If I'd known you before--"

"Before what?"

"Before you were turned."

"Wouldn't have cared tuppence for me, then."

"How do you know?" She searched his eyes--how could blue eyes be so heated?

"Know it for certain." He grabbed her then, his hand clamped to the back of her neck, pulling her mouth down to crush against his. She let him roll her underneath, let him spread her thighs wide. His cock prodded her belly, her mons, teasing.

As he kissed her, his fangs came down. The blue eyes were gold now. "You ever kill me, want you to look me in the eye when you do it."

"Do you think I'd stake you in the back, Spike?"

"Think you'd do whatever you had to do, like you always have. You're the girl who gets it done. Which is why I love you."

Moth to flame? She couldn't bear to think so. "I'm not going to stake you."

"It might happen that you'll have to. Don't tell me you couldn't."

"Even if it's true?"

"Better not be true."

"You want me to be able to kill you?"

He thrust inside her then, rolling her again so she was on top, full of him, bearing down. He was tense beneath her, all hard muscle and hunger.

"I don't want that to be necessary," she whispered.

"You gonna pretend you don't love me better like this? Don't I thrill you more? Never want to be somethin' you don't at least a little bit fear. Else how could you really love me right?"

"You had your soul when I fell in love with you." So did Angel.

"But wasn't 'til I came to you without it that you admitted it. An' I don't exactly see you backin' off now."

He stirred beneath her, his cock stroking exquisitely up, punctuating his words. The good-natured pliable Spike was hidden now in the hard-eyed vampire. Her whole body alit to his threat, his promise. When he seized her wrist, yanked the arm forward to bite into the round curve of the crook, her cry was more pleasure than pain. "Oh!" It was a terrible delicious suspension, balancing between the twin impalements, fangs and cock. He took a long smacking suck before--too soon for her leaping urge--letting go. His thumb pressed hard where his mouth had been. The yellow eyes took in her reaction as he licked his lips. For a moment she didn't know where to look--impossible to meet his gaze, after he'd just proved to her that as much as she possessed him, he possessed her in his turn.

Then, with gentlemanly gentleness, he rolled her down again, until they were lying side by side, her leg hooked high around his flank, where they could fuck very slowly and she could taste the tang of her own blood as he kissed her.

In the cocktail lounge attached to the old motel, what lights there were, were dim and red, and the atmosphere was redolent of char-broiled meat, cigar smoke, and spilled liquor. When they entered, just after sundown, the place was nearly empty--just a couple of lone men, one at each end of the bar, and the waitress who came out of the shadows to seat them in a booth.

The menus looked like they'd been printed in 1968, the prices updated with typed slips scotch-taped on. It was nearly too dark to make it out, but before she could start to read it, Spike plucked it out of her hand. "Know what you want."

"What?"

"Great big steak," he said, addressing not her but the waitress who had reappeared with her pad. "Two of 'em, rare. An' you can bring us a bottle of Jack Daniels."

When they were alone again, Spike rose and slipped into her side of the booth. "Can hear your belly rumbling."

"I am hungry. I haven't eaten since we left Sunnydale."

"Could ring up your mum while they're getting our supper."

She glanced at him. They'd been close all day, hugged up in the car, and for the last three hours, ferociously entwined in the room. But she was still glad to be in contact with him, her bare arm in against his sleeve, his hand curling around hers. "Go on, saw a phone down by the loos."

"Not yet. Anyway, she's probably driving home from the gallery." She wondered if her mother had gone to work that day. Well, why not? She'd have seen the note before she left the house, and known there was no point running around trying to track her down. Not again.

"If you don't ring her, I will."

"You'll do no such thing."

"Did you tell her you'd gone with me?"

"... No." She paused. "Believe me, it wouldn't make her feel better."

"Miss Anne--doesn't mean you need to cut her out altogether."

"Spike. How are you going to pay for our steaks? For the room?"

He rolled his eyes. "Pay for it. Like anyone. Not going to eat the desk clerk, if that's what you mean."

"But where do you get the money? You steal it."

"You seem pretty sure."

"I know you steal."

"Take what I want, yeah, have as good a time as I can, whenever I can. But when it comes to real money ... got a bit."

"What does that mean?"

"Been around a long time. There's places that clever old families ... an' clever old individuals ... keep their dosh."

"You have a bank account."

"You make it sound so suburban."

"Well, what are you talking about? Spell it out for me, I'm not old and clever."

"The Aurelian Clan--that goes back through Darla to the Master an' back before him though don't ask me where or how--has its resources. There's banking houses, private ones, ancient ones, that don't advertise, that deal in our sort of thing. Drusilla had her share doled out to her when she'd lasted twenty years, an' I got the same myself, in 1900. Now Dru's gone, I own her mite along with mine."

"Vampires have trust funds?"

"Aurelians have. An' when Dru an' I came into a bit of the shiny in our adventures, sometimes--not always--we'd chink some away for a rainy night. Mounts up, it does, over the decades. Mind you, it's not like we'd spend money for anything we couldn't get some other way. But even so, needed readies for some necessaries that don't come convenient on credit or fangs. Cabs 'n' train tickets an' that sort."

"How much money do you have?"

"Enough to look after you comfortably without knockin' anyone over."

"You really have no conscience, do you? I keep thinking that if you'd just try you'd develop one, but I guess that's like thinking if I just tried I could grow a tail."

"Convinced you can do anythin' you put your mind to, Slayer. But don't see what I need a bloody conscience for. I've already hung up my fangs for you."

"That's a lie."

"Haven't killed a human since I fell for you."

"You know, that's a detail that really doesn't stand in for the whole." Twin jets of hostility and a weird relief flared up in her. In his grasp she was capable of forgetting everything but her love, but that condition wasn't permanent. She remembered herself now, that she was a slayer. Changed as she was since the end of Angel, she couldn't change enough to overlook certain facts.

This would make it easier, to do what she'd intended to, coming here with him.

Before Spike could answer, the waitress arrived with the steaks, swimming in buttery blood.

She started in without waiting.



He was more interested in watching her eat than eating himself. For such a little slip of a thing, the slayer had an admirable appetite, when she let herself unleash it. She wasn't being shy now.

He waited for her to pause and reach for her glass before he said, "Double standard."

"Huh?"

"I mean, I'm not the first notorious vamp you've been involved with."

"Reminding me of that isn't helping your case."

"I'm not a bloody case. You don't give me enough credit, Miss Anne. Who convinced you it was no good you tryin' to quit your sacred calling? I did. An' who means to help you do the job? Angel didn't help you so much as dither 'round droppin' cryptic warnings, I suspect. Me, don't care what I kill long's I get to kill something. I'm perfectly willing to plow down every vamp an' demon between here and Constantinople if it'll keep you happy."

"Istanbul."

"You hearin' me?"

She ducked her head, picked up the knife and fork again. "Yes, I hear you."

"So what does it matter if I've got a soul or not?"

She sliced off a piece of steak, lifted it half to her mouth, and stopped.

He pressed her. "It's important to you that I suffer mental torments, an' horrid dreams that rip up my sleep? Because if it's that--"

Her cutlery clattered down. "Do I want you explicitly to suffer? Not especially. But I need to be able to trust you. With Angel, I could trust him as much as ... as anyone who was on my side. With you, your default setting is evil mischief. How do I know what you'll do if you're hungry enough? Bored enough? If you and I have a quarrel and are on the outs? If you decide you're not in love with me after all?"

"Seems to me you could ask all those questions of Xander Bloody Harris just the same. What's stoppin' him from going on the spree with a chain-saw? Plenty of fellows, born an' christened, do."

"Not plenty. And I don't have to ask those questions about Xander because Xander isn't like that. You are."

"Wait a tick." He pushed his plate back. "What's really goin' on here?"

"We're eating supper."

"This mornin' you come to me an' say you're ready for us to go away an' be together. An' now here we are, but you're still needling me because I'm not what I'm not." He could've laughed. She was smart, and not a bad little actress, but she didn't realize that her perpetual worrying at certain topics--like a loose tooth--was giving her away.

"You've convinced yourself that I'm no good, no matter how good I am for you."

Her sudden flush radiated across the table. "That isn't true! I came away with you today, doesn't that show--"

"No, it doesn't. Because I just sussed something else--the truth is you're running away from me. You've lured me out of Sunnydale to get me away from Faith and the watchers. An' now you're countin' on me believing we're on our way, an' being so happy an' off my guard that I'll get drunk now and be sleeping so deep I won't know it when you slip off at first light."

He could see, by how she folded her arms over her chest and stuck out her stubborn lip--another sure tell--that he'd got it in one.

"You keep sniping at me--really you're psyching yourself up to leave. You think you've got to atone for the rest of your brief life for what happened last spring, by cutting yourself off forever from everything you love."

"No."

"You think you're supposed to be alone. That you're not supposed to be loved--at least, not as a woman an' a slayer."

"No no no."

He leaned in closer to her. "You think you deserve nothing else but to die alone in battle. An' you mean to let that happen soon."

Her glassy stare showed him how right he was, on every point.

Not that there was a lick of satisfaction in it. It made him feel sick, how love always failed him, betrayed him. Always just out of reach whenever he thought he really had it in his grip. He'd never come first to any of the women who came first for him.

And this one, who more than Cecily or Drusilla, felt like the one, his true match, his destiny. If she couldn't accept his love ....

He slid out of the booth, stepped back from the table. "You want to keep on running an' running, go. I won't stop you."

She glanced up, her face chalky, the corners of her mouth trembling.

"Go on. Walk away from me in the open at least, 'stead of sneaking off." The anger rushed in on him with a whoosh, like a gas jet igniting. His hands tingled with it. "Go!"

She glanced around. The restaurant was still substantially empty. It would be a good place for a knock-down drag out--lots of furniture to throw, wood and glass to smash, while the help cowered back in the kitchen and the few patrons fled into the night.

But he didn't want to just get beaten up, and he knew for sure that if she threw a punch at him right now, he would bring his absolute A game to kill her.

He would kill her.

He squeezed his fists tight, thrust them behind his back.

Something of this must've reached her, because she kept her hands close to her sides as she slid out of the booth. She wasn't looking at him. He couldn't believe this was happening, as he watched her every move. Halfway hoping this confrontation would make her change her mind, but no, there she went, towards the exit. She might as well have had one end of his guts gripped in her tiny fist, so tight and seized did they feel.

In the arch leading to the exit, she paused, and he thought maybe this was it, the relenting.

"Please go back to Europe, Spike. There's no slayer there, you'll be safe."

"You don't fucking care if I'm safe!" He shouted at reddish black darkness where she no longer was.

You don't fucking care.

When he went back to their room it was just coming on for dawn, and he was sloppily, blearily soused. Sure enough, all her things were gone, and she'd taken some--but not all--of his spare dosh.

There wasn't a trucker on earth who wouldn't stop for a girl like Buffy, thumbing it on the side of the road. She was long gone by now.

Burrowing his face into the pillow, he passed out with all she'd left him, her scent on the scratchy linens.

~PART TWO~

He'd been drunk so long it didn't even feel like being drunk anymore, just like being out of his mind on a high thin kind of lonesomeness, and hunger. Rolling back into Sunnydale weeks after he'd left it was like a dream, an inside-out replay of the first time he'd arrived here, and nothing like the second one, when he'd been so coolly certain he was going to torment the slayer to the edge of despair, then kill her.

Now she'd tormented him to that edge, and maybe over it, and the only thing he wanted to kill was himself.

But not quite yet.

The last miniscule spark of harrowing idiot hope wasn't yet extinguished. Hope, his affliction.

He'd looked for the slayer in so many places, it only now occurred to him that she might've just gone to ground where she'd believe he wouldn't look again.

Through the kitchen window, Joyce was sipping something from a mug at the counter island, paging through the newspaper. He could hear the radio playing low, the kind of over-produced contemporary jazz that sounded like a betrayal of everything jazz was supposed to be about.

He listened out for other sounds in the house. He was pretty sure Faith was on the other side of town--he could smell her departure a little while ago in the aroma of bubble gum and the cheap lipstick she favored hanging in the outdoor air.

He didn't smell Buffy, but he wasn't going to let that convince him of anything.

Taking a swig from his hip flask, he tapped on the door glass.

Joyce started. When she saw him her eyes went wide.

Slipping the flask back into his hip pocket, he held his hands up, open and innocent.

Joyce came to the door. Didn't open it. "What are you doing here? Go away!"

"Just want to talk to you."

"What are you doing here? Where's Buffy?"

"She's not here?"

At this question, Joyce's face fell. Like her daughter, Spike thought, she was a beauty. But the discord of the last year had taken its toll on her. Beneath her make-up and her bouncily-coiffed hair, she was pale and drawn.

She opened the door.

When he stepped over the lintel, she slapped him.

A gasp escaped her. Her hand hovered in the air.

Then she slapped him again.

Her blows barely stung, but they left his head a little clearer.

"She left me nearly six weeks ago. Been lookin' for her ever since."

Joyce stared at him, but there was more of defeat than curiosity in her eyes.

Like him, she was on the teetering edge of giving up on her daughter altogether.

"Thought she might've come back here."

"I had one note, when she left with you, then nothing. How dare you come back here? I ought to--"

"Do what you feel." Spike plucked a wooden spoon out of the jug of utensils near the stove and offered it to her. "You'll have to put all your weight into it, an' aim here," he said, tapping his chest. "But the handle end oughta do it, if you decide should be done."

"Oh. Oh my God. This is insane. What is going on here?" She trembled, staring at the spoon, glancing around, looking at everything but him. "What did you do to her?"

"Nothing. Never could hurt a hair of her head."

"I don't understand. You're a vampire. You were enemies."

"It's a long story. Look, I just wanted to--"

"I have time. I have nothing but time. You explain it to me."

She gestured at one of the stools, and now her eyes blazed. So that was where Buffy got it from. He moved to obey. She closed the door, and leaned against it. "Every evening I hope she'll come back. Or at least call. I don't know if she's alive. I don't know ... her."

"Girl won't know herself, that's her bloody problem!" Spike's shout filled the kitchen, made Joyce jump. He dipped his head. "Sorry. Makes me mental, she does."

"You're drunk. ... I didn't know vampires could get drunk."

"I'm beyond drunk. An' sure they can."

Joyce put a kettle on to boil, took down a pot and filled it with loose tea. In a little while the comforting, sobering smell of strong English Breakfast steeping filled the kitchen. Spike sagged on the stool. This felt like the first rest he'd had in forever--if you could rest on a high stool under the sharp eye of one's beloved's mother. He barely slept, and was existing on the thin gruel of humans too drunk or high to fight him off, or whatever animal blood he could obtain. He'd tried killing--killing his victims, killing fellows he picked fights with in bars--but every time he got close to doing something really large and satisfying, he'd see her in his mind's eye, and all the strength drained out of him.

The only reason why he didn't have a black eye to show Joyce was because he'd barely stopped for the last couple of days to do more than gas up his car.

When she poured a cup of tea for him, he almost burst into tears.

"I don't know why I'm doing this. Why I invited you in."

"Didn't invite me in. Was already invited, you couldn't keep me out."

"Do you take sugar?"

"Ta." He added heaping spoonfuls. "You're a good woman."

"I'm waiting for my explanation. Why are you here? Why can't you leave us alone?"

"I'm in love with your daughter. All that power she's got, it eats at her too. She tried to quit, but she can't quit. Can't an' won't, not really. Want to cherish an' look after her long as she lives."

"I don't know anything about this slayer business."

"An' then there's the other thing that comes with bein' a slayer."

"What thing?"

He turned the hot cup around and around in his hands. "That would be the death-wish."

Beside him, Joyce sagged. He watched her out of the corners of his eyes. "Girl wants to die. They all do, the slayers. But yours, she thinks she's earned it. Thinks she's made a big hash of everythin' and ought to be punished." An' I'd like to punish her myself, like to spank her 'til she screams her lungs out. If I could just get my hands on her.

"A death wish. So is that where you come in?"

"Was at the start. Won't lie to you, missus, I came here to kill her."

"I saw you."

"Lot's changed since then." He began to tell her, and after the first halting sentences--the story seemed enormous and unrelatable, shaming and bizarre--he was somehow drawn in by Joyce's listening attention, her failure to interrupt, and told it all. More tea was brewed, food offered and refused, the radio sang on, ignored. Joyce's gaze seemed to weave a spell on him, so that he could say everything that was in his heart. And as it all poured out, he felt her sympathies engage, felt her soften, and that made it even more necessary, to relate everything he could, about his affair with Buffy, about Buffy herself. He kept back only the explicit news that he'd killed two slayers already. No point frightening her with that when he was in no state to kill anything right now.

"... she told me I ought to piss off back to Europe where I'd be safe. Safe. Ha. She doesn't give a toss."

Joyce shook herself, as if coming out of a trance. Hours had passed. "I think you're wrong there, Spike."

"Eh?"

"If it's like you say, that she ... that she ... is in such a bad way ... and I guess it is ... she shook you off because she wanted to protect you."

"Don't think so."

"Isn't it exactly what she's done to me? Whatever's gone wrong between us, no matter how mixed up she is, I know Buffy wants me to be safe."

"You, sure."

"Why would she fall for you?"

"Apparently she never did!"

Joyce was giving him the squint-eye. "She always liked good-looking, athletic boys. Who doesn't?"

"'Case you haven't noticed, I'm not a boy. Was a grown man when I was turned--over thirty. An' that was well over a hundred years ago."

"You're nothing like that other one, Angel. He never seemed to have much to say for himself."

This change in the conversational direction made him squirm. "I'd better be gettin' on then, since she's not here. Thanks for all the tea, an' listenin'. Sorry I couldn't bring better news."

"Don't you move!" Her hand came down on his arm. "You're just like her! You don't want to listen to anything you think you don't already know!"

"Look Missus, 'm sorry ...."

"You really believe she doesn't care for you? Not that I want her to care for you, another monster, but that's another story. You stay put, I'm going to get something I want you to see."

When she left the kitchen and went upstairs, he went to the door. He'd been wrong, Buffy hadn't returned home, and probably never would.

The catharsis of telling his story was giving way now to fatigue and bewilderment--he wasn't sure why Joyce had been so kind. He wasn't used to kindness.

Perhaps what she'd gone upstairs to fetch was a real stake from her daughter's room.

Or a flame-thrower.

He opened the door. The early-morning breeze bathed his face. There were still a couple of hours until dawn, he could go and find somewhere to lay low and make some plans for where to head next.

"Wait."

Joyce was back. In her hand a piece of loose leaf paper. "I think you should read this."

The note Buffy had left before taking off with him. Apologies to her mother, assurances that she loved her, that she wished she could be the way she used to be. Repeated pleas for understanding and forgiveness.

And then at the end, a few lines that froze him. Finally, Mom, please don't blame Spike. He didn't force me to leave, or corrupt me, or do anything bad to make me go. I love him so much. I know you probably think this is just like when I loved Angel, and that it's wrong for me and I'm too young to know my mind, but if you could only understand what I feel, what I NEED. I wish I could explain it right. He knows me. He knows me, the girl me and the warrior me, the way no one ever has. You probably don't get it--it's a slayer thing and I can barely explain it to MYSELF. He just ... understands. When I'm with him I can breathe.

I will miss you every single hour. I promise I'll call.

xxxxxxxxoooooooooooooooBuffy

Looking up, he found Joyce watching him with an intense almost triumphant attention.

"I've read this note so many times I could recite it backwards. And I may not know all my daughter's secrets, but I know her. She wouldn't tell me she was in love with some man she knew I'd hate for her to be in love with if it wasn't completely true."

The paper slid from his fingers, fluttered to the floor. They both bent for it, and almost bumped heads. "Missus ... Joyce, look--"

"Leaving home with you was certainly foolish and it makes me crazy that I don't know where she is, but obviously she wanted in her misguided way to keep you safe." Tears started from her eyes. "Oh, why couldn't you look after her better? Why did you have to quarrel with her?"

"Didn't quarrel with her. Like I told you, she was determined to go off on her own."

"Spike, do you think she's still alive?"

"Wish I could say I'd know it if she wasn't. I dunno. Can't stop lookin' for her, though."

"How? How will we find her?"

She was crying now, and it felt natural that she moved close to him, that he took her in his arms. A powerful emotion moved him--it was the first time he'd had a chance to share his grief, and that Joyce accepted it as on par with her own, overwhelmed him. He rocked her softly until her tears ran out. She sounded like Buffy when she cried.

"They just seem to go on without her. Mr Giles and Faith and the others."

"What did Giles say about all this?"

"I don't know. I didn't consult him. He didn't consult me."

"Faith's still stayin' here."

"I wasn't going to throw her out, none of this trouble is her fault. I barely see her. Some weeks I wouldn't know she was here except for the grocery bills."

"Huh." He pictured them all, the so-called Scoobies, going about their dopey teenaged lives as if Buffy had never been, and hatred filled his heart.

But then an idea began to form.

"Tell you who we ought to see."

"Not Mr Giles?"

"No. Our Miss Rosenberg. Rosenberg who doesn't know her own strength. She got us into this mess an' she just may be able to get us out."

Spike listened from the kitchen as Joyce opened the door. Willow entered stammering in her high querying 'what did little old me do?' voice.

Joyce had called her at 5:30 a.m., waking her up, and now it was just past 6:00. On the phone she'd said only that she needed Willow to come by before school, and to leave some time to talk. Spike admired the crispness of her voice, her no-nonsense quality. Little redhead was a complete sucker for anything that sounded like an authority figure, so she didn't even ask questions, just agreed to get dressed and come. Like any good mother, Joyce. could put it on when it was required, even though she'd been sniffling on and off for an hour beforehand.

Now she led Willow into the kitchen.

"So what is--oh. Mrs Summers, there's a vampire here!"

"Can't put anything past you," Spike said. "Always knew you were clever."

"What what what is he doing here?"

Joyce nudged her towards one of the counter stools, but Willow didn't want to budge. She was giving Joyce the eye now, like she thought maybe they were both vampires and she'd been called in to play the part of breakfast.

Which Spike wouldn't have minded so much. He was hungry, and his next meal nowhere in sight.

"Buffy--remember her? Bitty blond with the strong right hook, used to be your best mate? She's gone missing. You're going to help us find her."

Willow's eyes were so wide they threatened to swallow her face.

Joyce said, "It's all right, Willow. Spike is ... he's ... well, for our purposes at the moment, he's an ally."

"Our purposes? We have purposes? Mrs Summers, what's going on here?"

"Spike tells me that you have certain powers."

"Powers! I don't have any pow--I'm way good at math, yes, but--"

"He said you were a witch. You used your powers to restore Angel's soul. And Spike's too, and all the vampires who were in range. That's got to mean there's very little you can't do."

Now Willow's eyes looked to pop out. "But the spell didn't work. Buffy had to kill Angel."

"It worked. On him. On me. On Drusilla. Slayer had to put Angel down anyway, to keep whole world from getting sucked into the mouth of Acathla. But that's not what we're here to talk about."

"I gave you back your soul?"

"For a bit. But what we need now's a locator spell."




Vermilion Chutes, Alberta was the town she ended up in, after four days of hitchhiking with various long-haul truckers. She hadn't meant to cross into Canada, but now she was there, she felt even more disappeared. Safer from whatever--whoever--might be looking for her.

She took a job waiting tables, and a little furnished room. She hid there, while the landscape filled up with snow, a deep-freeze she'd never experienced before, that matched her own inner freeze. When she lay in her narrow cot at night, hearing the ice crack the branches of nearby trees, it reminded her of the aching and cracking inside herself.

She patrolled a couple of evenings a week. Amazingly, there were vampires even this far north, preying on the hunters and fishermen. At least there were at first; by the end of the third week, she seemed to have cleared them all out, or else word had gotten around that the slayer was in town.

She stayed another couple of weeks, still patrolling though there was nothing to find, feeling like she was poised on the lip of something big and enormous, a dark gelid lake she was supposed to dive into, that would swallow her up.

One evening she sorted through her things, the few keepsakes she'd taken with her from home. All she had of her mother was one photograph. Of Angel, nothing but the ring she would never wear again, and bitter memory, bitterer still because she tried so hard to summon up the sweetness that preceded the end, and couldn't find it.

Of Spike, whom she'd fled, whom she was fleeing right now, fleeing every minute, she had nothing at all. Which was somehow awful, but also how she wanted it, because she'd made an enormous mistake there. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that he'd revealed her for the enormous mistake she was. She was a freak, who couldn't live with her mother, her friends, her watcher, couldn't give herself to anybody but vampires. The one person she longed for, that her body broke open for every morning in her dreams, was a disgusting undead demon.

She didn't love him, she never had, she couldn't.. Could she? What did that make her, if he was all she loved? No, no, no. She told herself over and over: what went on between her and Spike was more like the relationship between the junkie and the junk. Spike was junk, and he'd ruined her life.

She made up her mind then, that she was going to dispose of the past. She gathered up what she had--the ring, the picture, and to stand in for Spike, since there was nothing else, the pair of panties he'd last taken off her. With the things stuffed in her jacket pocket, she went on patrol, planning afterwards to find someplace quiet--the whole little town would be dead quiet at two a.m.--to burn them all.

To become someone else. Just the slayer, with no past, and no future. Which was what she suspected the slayer was really supposed to be.

The cold was merciless. She did her usual sweep--by the back doors of the bars, behind the Tim Horton's, and then to the all-night laundromat. It was there, under the blearying fly-specked fluorescent tubes, that she found a fight, three big vamps emerging from the back room to surround her.

When she was done with them, her jacket was torn in a big gash made with her own stake, the down floating around her in the heat-saturated air. Her panties were gone--one of the vamps had been clutching them when he dusted. Her mom's picture had a wet muddy footprint on it, and the ring--she'd heard it hit the linoleum when her jacket went, but she couldn't find it now. On hands and knees she scrabbled around beneath the machines, the folding table, her heart pounding in her ears, sweat breaking down her back. She looked and looked, but the ring didn't turn up.

In the end she lit her mother's picture up with a match, and let it drop into the deep utility sink, where it curled and dissolved.

She trudged back to her room, clutching the remains of her jacket around herself. Showered and changed into her uniform and got to her morning waitressing shift early.

It was around her quitting time when she overheard two cops talking, about a man they had in the drunk tank at the station.

The laundromat attendent had come out of the back room around lunch time to find a man--"big, strapping young fellow"--crashed out on the floor by the dryers, fast asleep, "buck-naked". There was no one else around, and as she attested to the police, "I never heard the door jingle, and I was only back there for a minute." Of course she'd called the cops. And though the guy didn't act or smell drunk, he couldn't account for himself, and he was naked, so they'd hauled him in.

This didn't sound very demony. Demony things didn't generally happen in the middle of the afternoon. But she had the laundromat on her mind--she'd been thinking she'd go back there after her shift to look around again for the ring. Maybe someone had found it and turned it in; this was the kind of town where people did turn in lost articles. So when she gave them their check, Buffy asked the cops what the naked guy was like. They smiled lewd smiles at her, chuckling at the question. "Haven't you seen any? Pretty girl like you shouldn't have to wonder."

"What's going to happen to him?"

The cop shrugged. "We run his prints through the system. If he's not wanted for anything, we let him go."

The police station was on the way to the laundromat. She decided to look in--there was no sun that day, so it wasn't impossible that the naked guy was a vampire. He could do a lot of damage if he was still in the drunk tank later, when the real drunks got thrown in. Telling the officer at the desk that she was looking for her boyfriend who'd gone missing, she asked for a glimpse. Following another officer down the corridor towards the back, she waited to feel that tingle in her nape, the vampire tingle.

The man, dressed in grey sweats a couple of sizes too small, was folded onto the bunk, arms curled around him against the deep moist chill of the cells. He was asleep, but as she looked at him, he began to stir.

"That your boyfriend, Miss?"

Buffy stared. The light was bad, but of course she would know him anywhere. Anywhere.

She couldn't get enough air to answer. Her chest was hollow, empty.

He lifted his head then, and looked at her. "Buffy? How did you find me?"

By the time she promised the police that he'd be no more trouble, that she'd get him seen by a doctor for sure if they'd release him to her care, the short winter day had gone dark. Buffy wanted to get out of there. Officials made her nervous--what if they asked her for ID? She wasn't even Canadian. She hauled the heavy street door open with relief. "Let's go."

When the freezing wind hit his face, Angel shrank back into the dingy vestibule. "Where's your car?"

"I don't have a car. We have to walk. My room's not far. We'll get you some warmer clothes tomorrow. I didn't think vampires felt the cold, anyway."

She ducked out into it, curled down into the coat she'd borrowed from one of the cooks during her shift. He followed on her heels. She heard him groan as the full force of the wind hit him. He lurched along just behind her in the ill-fitting shoes they'd given him in the station. She glanced down and saw he had no socks on. "Almost there."

He stamped his feet hard on the mat by time they reached her door. She fumbled the key out of her little bag, dropped it, had to take off her glove to pick it up. He was shivering hard as they crowded into her room, which had never been tinier than with him in it, as if he'd bust out the ceiling were he to raise his head, the walls if he shrugged his shoulders. Pulling the quilt off the cot, Buffy threw it around him.

He grabbed her hand. Pulled her in against him. She hadn't touched him yet, not in front of the policemen, not in her confusion.

"I can't believe you're here," Angel said. His voice rumbled through her. "I don't even know where this is."

Incredulity dopplered through her mind. She wanted to pull away, but his big arms were folded around her. Her feet and hands throbbed with returning warmth. It was hard to breathe, she felt suspended, as if this reunion existed somehow outside of ordinary time.

She'd killed him. He couldn't be here again if she'd killed him.

Then a dull thumping reached her, where her ear was pressed to his chest, through the stuff of his sweatshirt. At first she couldn't think what it was.

He was eating with two hands, while she stared. Four double cheeseburgers weren't going to be enough. Angel chewed grinning, his eyes fixed on her like she was going to be the next morsel. He was dressed now, after a whirlwind trip to the Wal-Mart on the edge of town, like a real Vermilion Chuter, in Carhartt jeans, workboots, layers of thermals and flannel shirts and hoodies. Now they were in a back booth at the truck-stop, which she'd opted for over the diner where she worked. She wasn't ready yet to show him there. Didn't want to explain him to anyone she knew, while she couldn't yet explain him to herself.

"Angel--how?"

He took a long swallow of hot coffee. "I don't know. I don't know how I got here." He put down his burger, reached for her hand. His was warm now, and she could feel the pulse beating in the curve of his thumb.

Which, to put it mildly, freaked her out.

"Where did you come from?"

Angel frowned then. His grip on her loosened. "You know. You know where you sent me."

Wishing she'd never started this, Buffy nodded. Sometimes it seemed like she knew nothing else--she only had to close her eyes to see Acathla's widening maw. To feel again what it was like to thrust that blade into Angel's gut.

"I had no choice."

"I know." He squeezed her hand again, then let it go. "We don't have to talk about it. Maybe it's worth it, for this." He thumped his chest.

"I can't believe you're alive." She'd said this already about ten times. The words had been beating a tattoo in her head for the last couple of hours. "It's wonderful. This is wonderful."

"What about you? What are you doing here?" He resumed eating. She could imagine him never stopping. Her own burger and fries were cooling nearly untouched in front of her.

"It's a long story."

"So?"

"No, really. It's ... complicated."

"You came here to find me? You knew somehow."

She wasn't sure why, but she nodded.

"So now you--we--can go back to Sunnydale."

"No. We don't go back to Sunnydale." It came to her then, a jarring of hope. Together they could do anything. Go anywhere. Angel was back, a real human man. They could have the life she used to daydream about. Find somewhere that felt right, build something together. She could forget about the mistakes she'd made. This was what she'd been aiming for last night, when she got rid of those things of the past. A fresh clean start.

He frowned. "What do you mean? Aren't you ... aren't you supposed to be in school? Where's your mother?"

"All of that is finished. Don't worry about that."

He sat back then against the banquette, focusing fully on her, the food set aside. He gave her a thorough visual going over, so intense that she began to blush. She thought he was going to cross-examine her, press her. Maybe rat her out. This had happened before, after all.

With Spike.

Angel said, "Do you still want me, Buffy?"

Her heart started fluttering. Her vision dimmed, he swam before her. She struggled to take a breath.

"Angel ...."

"I don't even have to ask, do I?"

He began to smile.

He wasn't Spike.

She found herself smiling back.

Then Angel began to laugh, and after her initial shock--had she ever seen him like this? So animated, so ... alive?--she fell to giggling as well.

She worked one more shift at the diner, because it was payday. She'd had no sleep at all, but it didn't matter; she floated through it. Her tips were never better. At quitting time she went out the back, and there was Angel waiting for her in an idling Chevy with North Dakota license plates and a rusted undercarriage.

They kissed until the windows were thoroughly fogged. She wiped them down with her gloves as Angel put the car in drive. They left Vermilion Chutes, heading south.

He thought she'd be able to do it for them right there and then--a witch with the power to force souls into vampires should be capable of that. But Willow claimed that she needed to do research, that she'd need ingredients. She couldn't do anything until after school, and then it might take her a few evenings to figure it out. Joyce listened to this with surprising patience; Spike had to jam his hands in his pockets to keep from chucking the ornaments about. He didn't realize he was pacing like a caged panther until Joyce got in his way.

"Would you sit? You're making the child nervous."

"Child's got nothin' to be nervous about."

Joyce's look made him smile. She was a wonder, this woman. Not the least bit afraid of him, and coping beautifully with a crazy situation. If her daughter could grow up like her--if she could grow up--she'd be just fine.

Joyce said, "What?"

"Just thinkin' what a good mum you are," Spike murmured, so Willow wouldn't hear.

She made a futile gesture. "How would you know?"

"Had a mum once myself, didn't I?"

At this, Joyce's eyes widened. Then she turned back to Willow, who was gathering her things up to go to school. The girl gave him a furtive glance, and he did his best to look mild for her. It passed his understanding, how she could think of Buffy as a friend and not want to be moving heaven and earth to help her.

When the girl was gone, Joyce sagged against the door. "I have to get to the gallery."

"Kept you up all night."

"Do you think it's the first time I've sat up all night over Buffy? At least now I have half an idea I might see her again." She swept the hair from her eyes. "You're welcome to stay here. You can sleep on the sofa, or--I suppose you can use Buffy's room. She probably wouldn't mind."

Spike's heart cracked. He'd have liked to take her in his arms again. She was a little too good for this world, or at any rate, for the hellmouth, this Mrs Summers. And he was half in love with her as well. "You've got your dark little slayer for a guest--" He could smell Faith asleep upstairs--she'd come in during the night, up the drainpipe directly into her room, "--don't want a vamp for another. I'll be at the Hi-Vue Motor Lodge. We'll keep in touch."

"Well, all right. But you should come back tonight ... for supper."

"I'm a blood-drinker, missus," he said gently. "You know that."

Joyce looked stalwart. "Faith never sits down to a meal with me anymore. You come at seven-thirty, I'll feed you."

"All right then. Be glad to."

"You're not scared?" Angel ran a finger--a warm finger--along the line of her bra strap, from the back of her shoulder down to the front, brushing the top of her breast. "Nothing bad will happen this time, Buffy. I'm not going to change afterwards."

"I ... I know." She couldn't believe she was this nervous. To calm herself, she sought his mouth, engaged him in kisses to postpone the moment when his hands went into her clothes, when her clothes came off.

She'd thought she was completely comfortable with sex, but right here in his motel room outside Calgary, she felt like a virgin. Even more of a virgin than she'd been when she really was, that first time in Angel's basement room. Then she'd been so certain of him. He was her love, and he'd been given back to her after they both thought he'd have to leave her for years. It was her birthday, and she was ready to be his, ready to be her own, a woman with a woman's desires.

And it was so good, and she'd been so happy. They'd both been so happy, and his happiness made Angel back into a monster. Even sensible of his pulse as he held her, she couldn't help thinking of him that way. Even though the last time she'd seen him--right before she'd run him through with her sword--he'd been her sweetheart again. Trusting her. Closing his eyes.

How did he remember that moment? Did he remember it at all?

She wasn't going to ask.

Angel eased her back. The bedspread gave off a smell of chemical cleanliness. She willed herself not to think. The thing to do was to rush this along, to get to the part that she was irrationally dreading, and then once that was done, she could slow it all down again, and enjoy him.

And not think about Spike. Who was the last person she wanted to think about even as he was inextricably tied up with her experience of lovemaking in sterile motel rooms--he knew how to make the most featureless little box into a hothouse jungle of adventure and satiety. Spike who had been the willing, elastic object of all her sexual fancies. Fancy was his word--what d'you fancy, Miss Anne?, he'd say, offering himself to her, following her lead. God, he was amazing, how he'd look at her while she plundered his body. How he'd handle her like he owned her, and at the same time make her feel like she owned him, like he was hers to do with whatever she wanted. That noise he'd make sometimes when he came, and how he'd throw his head back, baring his throat.

A shot of lust blasted through her. She tugged at Angel, coaxing him, wriggling free of her jeans. "I need you to fuck me. Fuck me right now."

It took her a moment to catch up with the surprise in his eyes, the little hitch as he stared at her.

"What? C'mon."

He said nothing, but he got busy. She'd forgotten how big he was in every dimension, how heavy. She fell silent too, as a weird sense of the sacramental came over her. This was Angel. He'd been given back to her, and this was ... this ... she struggled to be adequate to the meaning of this, their reunion, their resumption. He took her with a churchy solemn slowness. It was like the first time, reverent and careful. Except that she wasn't the same girl as she was then. She struggled to concentrate, to stay present. She couldn't close her eyes, needed to stay conscious every second of who this was. Who it wasn't.

She took deep breaths--this Angel gave off a heavy sweat, he smelled like a man. She'd never fucked a live man before; the realization made her heart speed up; she quivered all over.

He paused. "You all right?"

"Yes, are you?"

"Sure."

"You're so quiet."

He buried his face in her neck. She flexed hard around him, bringing on her own climax, a light skimming one she barely noticed, so intent was she on wanting him to come quick, so this would stop. She wanted to get to the next part, to get past the next part, to get on to the long time ahead when they'd be a couple and she wouldn't be thinking about the past--his, hers, anyone's--anymore.

Angel came in long shudders, groaning in a way more suggestive of pain and its release than of pleasure. He went soft in her, on her, still closed in heavy, his flesh slick beneath her hands.

"You okay?" she said.

"I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten what this was like."

"What was it like?" She didn't know if he was referring to sex, or to being alive again.

"Good."

He'd never been Mr Words. Not like ... he who she wasn't thinking about. Angel smiled, that particular sweet boyish smile that had astonished her the first time it dawned on his monolithic face, and astonished her again now; it was so tender and clear-eyed. She used to daydream by the hour of sharing a pillow with him just as they were now, of him looking at her just this way. She was wary now--how happy was too happy?--but at the same time, it was irresistible, the sweetness of it.

"I was thinking, Buffy. In the car."

They'd driven through the night. Come into Calgary in the early morning.

"What were you thinking?"

"I could look after you better if we were husband and wife. That would be the right thing. When we get to Vegas, we should do that, right off ... I mean, if you agree."

"Do ... "

He got up on one elbow. "I'm saying this all wrong. Buffy, I'd like you to be my wife. Will you marry me tomorrow?"

Spike was completely sober for the first time in weeks when he left the slayer's house. He slept, and woke up in the late afternoon knowing his drunk was over. Lying in the motel bed, aware of the aromas of the last thirty people who'd been there, he thought of Buffy, missing her with a greedy tactile yearning, for her restless little body, her rare laugh, the tones of her voice, her tears and bullying and aroma.

She was the strongest person he'd ever known. But so young and foolish.

She needed him. He didn't know why things had come about the way they did, but he was convinced that this slayer needed him and that before he'd choose to have his old merry existence back, he'd choose her. Choose to be hers, to serve her purposes. It was nothing to do with good or evil--he didn't care for being good, or anybody's good but hers, and her mother's.

She'd gotten inside him, her fierce little spirit danced in him, possessed him.

There was absolutely no question that he'd find her, that she'd realize he was for her.

She'd made him that way.

When he knocked on Joyce's door, he'd made himself as neat and presentable as he could, in a white shirt he'd stolen on the way over. He left his duster in the car, and carried a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates, both of which he'd actually paid for.

She raised an eyebrow when he handed them to her. "I thought it was my daughter you were in love with."

"She takes after you, in every way," Spike said. "Well, 'cept in the runnin' off when things get tough way, but she'll learn better."

"Will she?" Joyce brought the flowers into the kitchen. He followed her through, past the rather formally-set dining room table, where she'd laid their places at right angles at one end. "Nothing is going the way it should. She's supposed to be finishing high school and picking a college, not disappearing on her own. Not getting involved with older men. Vampires or not, Angel was too old for her. You're too old for her. She's just a girl." Joyce was cutting the stems, arranging the flowers in a vase, her back to him at the sink.

"I know it. But that ship's sailed, missus. An' look at it this way--no chance with me that she'll end up up-the-spout, or with a dose of the clap. Not to be ... crude about it."

"Crude. Yes."

"I won't hurt her."

"Are you trying to make me laugh?"

"Her girlhood ended a few miles back. Can look at it different ways: when she became the slayer. Or when she died an' was revived. Anyhow, before she took Angel an' he betrayed her. She's in the thick of it now, an' there's no use thinkin' of depriving her of the compensations of the life."

"You think you're a compensation? You have a high opinion of yourself! Just like a man."

"Know I satisfy her, that's all. It's little enough for what she has to go through. What's comin' in her future."

Joyce brushed past him, holding the vase in both hands, back into the dining room. "Satisfy her." She sounded on the verge of tears. "For heaven's sake, the child is barely seventeen."

Spike followed. "You don't like to think of it, but the girl's got needs. An' I respect her, an' I'll lay myself down for her. I mean I'll part with my existence, to help her."

Joyce wheeled around. "Why? You're a vampire. She's the slayer. I don't understand why you--"

Spike laughed. "Haven't you met her?"

Joyce moved past him again, back to the stove. "Not like you have, apparently."

She'd bought fresh cow blood, heated it in a double-boiler, and offered it to him first in a soup plate. He asked for a cup instead, and made short work of it, because it was clear that she meant to feed him a real meal as well, and he meant to make a show of appreciating every bite.

She'd assembled something like an English Sunday dinner; a roast of beef, very rare, root vegetables and potatoes, a Yorkshire pudding she broke open in a veil of steam. He hadn't seen the like in decades. She'd have been working all evening. He supposed it was a good distraction for her.

"I didn't think vampires ate food."

"Most don't." He didn't have to force himself; she was a good cook. "Lovely, this is. Let's see you eat yours." She'd filled a plate for herself, and barely touched it. Just like her daughter. "Go on. Need to keep your strength up."

Joyce stared past him. "What if I'm making another terrible mistake? Trusting you. This is crazy! You're a terrible monster, and you ... you ... I saw you, when ...."

"I am a terrible monster, me. But once I give myself to someone ... I don't change." He touched his chest, where his heart lay still and full. "I can't. I'm yours now, much as I'm Buffy's. Never hurt you. Will do all for you I can."

Joyce fixed him with a fiery eye. "Including give her up? If I asked you to? For Buffy's own good?"

Spike forked up another bite. "Can talk about that when we've got her back."

When Buffy woke, she was alone. She knew it even before she opened her eyes; the room felt hollow and still around her. She scrambled up. Not again. Notagainnotagainnotagain.

But the cream-colored sheet of paper on the pillow caught her eye before she could get too excited.

She'd never really seen Angel's hand-writing. It was old-fashioned, not very legible. Taking care of a couple of things. Back soon. I love you. A.

Soon? What was soon? She took a shower. Sat around watching TV for an hour, then went out to the restaurant across the road from the motel. Her stomach was screaming with hunger, though she was so keyed up she was barely aware of an appetite.

She thought of Las Vegas--lots of mental images from movies and TV shows, but she'd never been there, and wondered if it really could be as glitzy and bright as all that, or if the reality would be quite different. Less.

Maybe not. In her experience, life didn't tend to be less than anticipated. If anything, it was more. Or maybe the word was worse.

But she'd taken a turn now. Angel was restored to her, and with him, things would be right. She would be fulfilled. And in Las Vegas, there would be plenty for her--for both of them--to do.

Back in the room, the prime-time TV shows gave way to Letterman and Leno, and then Jimmy Kimmel. Angel was still out. She went out again, a stake in her waistband. Unlikely to be any vampires around here, within walking distance. She tried hitching into the center of Calgary, but no one stopped for her, and it was cold, so she retreated back to the room. She didn't know what time it was when she fell asleep; the jangling phone on the bedstand woke her.

Angel said, "You okay?"

"Where are you? What time is it?"

"I'm a little held up, but I'll back soon."

"You've been gone ... it's tomorrow now." She was confused, didn't know if it was still night, or morning, or maybe afternoon. She'd been sleeping so heavily.

"Just a little longer. Getting some details fixed up. Anyway, it's better for the man and the girl to be separated before their wedding night, right?"

She sat up, ran a hand through her hair. Cradled the receiver closer. "I didn't say yes yet, as you'll recall."

"You didn't say no."

"You really want to marry me?" Buffy said. It was irksome that he wasn't here, but on the other hand, she was enjoying this chance to flirt gently down the phone. They'd never done that, back in Sunnydale.

"You know I do."

"I don't even know your name, Angel. Who will I be, if I marry you?"

There was a silence on the line. She heard noise in the background, it sounded like he was calling from a barroom. Music and voices.

"Have you forgotten your name?" she teased.

"Sometimes I do. Did. Will you take it?"

"That depends on what it is."

"Will you?"

"Yes. Of course I will."

"You'll be Mrs Liam O'Connor."

"Mrs Liam O'Connor."

"Will you?"

"When are you coming back? What's the time?

"I'll be back by morning. You can be patient, can't you?" His voice was low, gentle; he was whispering to be heard beneath the background din. Maybe to be unheard by whoever else was around. She wondered what details he could be taking care of in a place like that, but before she could ask, he said, "I'll see you before you know it. Goodbye, Buffy."

The line went dead. She hung up the phone, and lay back. "Mrs Liam O'Connor. Mrs O'Connor." She tried it out. "Mrs O. Buffy O. Buffy Anne Summers O'Connor, the Vampire Slayer."

The next time she woke, he was quietly pulling the magazine from under her cheek. She'd dozed off surrounded by them: Brides, Martha Stewart Weddings, Modern Bride. He smiled as he loomed over her. She opened her arms to him. He was ready for her; she opened and he slid inside.

"You're so wet."

"Guess I was dreaming about you."

"I'm going to make love to you every day. Every day for the rest of our lives."

It was better this time, waking out of sleep to receive him, warm and languid, rocking. He smelled like cigarette smoke and tasted of beer, but she didn't mind that. They were manly aromas, fitting. "You get everything done?"

"We're all set."

He smiled into her eyes, laying kisses on her face, all around her mouth.

"Set how?"

"For our new life. For me to take care of you." He lowered his mouth to her breasts, kissed each one with worshipful thoroughness.

She wrapped her legs around him, and swiveled.

A little later he said, "You're different."

"Different? Since when?" She thought he meant in the last day, since he'd left her here waiting for him.

"Where'd you learn to move that way? Make love that way?"

"What way? What was wrong with it?"

"Nothing, I guess. You've been to bed with someone else."

"No." She wasn't quite sure why she was lying altogether, when really all she needed to do was lie about Spike. But the mere thought of Spike right here, when she was spread out beneath Angel, made her flush all over with shame, and ... something else, some feeling she was not going to examine. Spike was finished, she'd left Spike. Dirty filthy Spike. She wasn't going to think about him.

She mustn't permit herself to think about him.

"You had another man."

"I've been reading the sex tips in Cosmo."

"You're telling me you haven't been with anyone else?"

From his tone, she was halfway sure she could say yes, yes she'd had another boyfriend, some high school classmate and of course they'd done it, who these days expected a seventeen year old girl not to fuck? Instead she shook her head with vehemence.

"No one else."

"You didn't think you'd ever see me again."

"I loved you. I mean--I love you. Hey--I thought you said we shouldn't do this before our wedding night. That it was better to be apart?"

"Forgot. Missed you too much while I was out." He kissed her. "It'll be a couple days, anyway. Since you set store by having a pretty dress."

"I can't afford one. I just wanted to, you know, fantasize about it."

"I'll get you the dress. You don't have to worry."

"How? You don't have any money either."

"I've got enough for us."

"The trust, right, I forgot."

Angel raised his head a little. "Trust?"

"You know. The Aurelian trust. They didn't change your PIN number when you came back human, did they?"

"How do you know about that?"

"I ... I looked it up, in Giles' library."

"You were reading up on the Aurelian line?"

"Yes. What, do you think I'm stupid? Illiterate?" She almost believed it now, that she'd cracked the books. How dare he act surprised that she would do that?

"Of course not." He put a hand out and caressed her face. "And I'll always have plenty to take care of you, Buffy. You never have to doubt that."

At the border crossing, Angel showed a North Dakota driver's license that raised no eyebrows. Buffy wondered how he'd acquired it, but she was too anxious about her own I.D. passing muster--it was a fake one she'd gotten in New York City last summer, where one of her co-workers hooked her up--to have much time to ponder. She'd thought of hers as a way to get into bars--it said she was twenty-one--and had never anticipated using it to cross a national line. But as she held her breath, the man in the uniform handed it back to Angel with his own, and waved them through. "Welcome home."

They took two days getting to Las Vegas, listening to oldies and country music on the radio. Angel got stopped once for speeding, but charmed the officer into letting them go with a warning. They talked little, and Buffy was content with that, content to watch the miles elapse with the music. There didn't seem to be anything to talk about--the past was a book they both wanted to keep shut, and the future ... what was there to say about it? They were going to get married and then they were just going to live it.

She'd been logy and slow-headed all through the long desert drive. But Las Vegas woke her up. The lights amazed her--she'd seen them in movies, but the reality--sitting in the stop-and-start traffic on the strip in the early evening, dazzled her. Crowds on foot surged in and out of every frantically flashing building. The presence of demons pinged her everywhere, so it was all she could do not to jump out of the car right there and give chase.

"I feel like a can of soda that's been shaken up!"

Angel smiled. "Thought you'd like it."

They passed the casinos and hotels, and turned in at the fancy new mall. "You go on into Saks and find that dress you want. I'll get us a room and come back for you." He pressed a wad of bills into her hand. When he'd pulled away and she looked at them, Buffy saw they were hundreds--twenty of them, crisp and new. She boggled, then stuffed them away into her front jeans pocket.

The saleswoman in the bridal department looked a little askance at her, in her cheap clothes, her ponytail, her solitude. The other women there looking at gowns all seemed to be groomed to the nines, manicured, made-up, everyone wearing heels, everyone with at least one accomplice, mothers, sisters, friends, to ooh and ah and squeal.

Buffy said, "I'm getting married tonight, I'm ready to buy a dress now. Cash." She thought. "Shoes too. Everything."

This declaration seemed to focus the clerk; five minutes later she was buttoning her into the first of a succession of full frothy white confections straight out of her schoolgirl fantasies. She pulled the band from her hair so it hung over her shoulders, and swirled this way and that in the three-way mirror. Mrs O'Connor. Introducing Mrs O'Connor. That would be her name, come midnight.

A voice startled her out of her happy reverie. "Sweetheart, look at these!" She flung open the dressing room door, Mom? Mom! halfway out of her lips, before she realized the woman wasn't speaking to her. She sounded like Joyce, but she was short and squat and dark haired, bustling into another room with veils over her arm. Not for her at all.

Buffy sank onto the little pouf in the corner. The big Scarlett O'Hara skirts rustled and crinkled as she dropped. She'd always assumed her mother would be there, beaming and approving and beautiful in a light blue silk, at her wedding. She'd be delighted and she would dance once with Angel. She'd also imagined that her father would come to the wedding too--leaving his secretary behind in L.A.--and that Mom would dance with him as well, and they'd talk, and when she got back from her honeymoon it would be to the news that they were going to get married again, and they'd be a complete family once more. All forgiven.

She thought of calling her. Maybe she could persuade her mother to come here, to be her witness. Wouldn't she be so happy to be reunited, that she'd agree to everything?

No. She wouldn't. She'd mess it all up. Insist that Buffy was still just seventeen, refuse her consent. Try to drag her back home.

She'd have to wait, to tell Mom after it was done. After it had been done for a while, too late to undo. Next year, when she was eighteen.

Until then, she'd have to go on going it alone.

"How are we doing in here?" The salesclerk poked her head in, and Buffy sprang up. "Do you like this? Or do you want to try the cream tulle again?"

She tried the cream tulle again. She tried a few others, and the dresses began to all the look the same. She couldn't really see herself in the mirror anymore. The whole thing seemed so strange.

Then the clerk knocked again. "I think that's your fiance who's pacing around the department like a lion--can I tell him you're almost ready?"

She hadn't realized weddings went so fast. Or maybe it was just weddings in Las Vegas, where you had to line up to wait for the chapel to be free, and there were other couples and families waiting behind you.

When it was all done Buffy wanted to cry, because she'd missed it. Even though she was wearing the dress, even though they'd had their picture taken, and Angel's arm was around hers, and they were wearing rings, she hadn't experienced the actual wedding; it had happened somehow between one inhalation, one eye-blink, and the next. Over and done with before she was ready. And now they were in the car again, driving away from the glaring white lights of the wedding chapel.

Angel glanced at her. "What's the matter?"

"Huh?"

"You look unhappy."

"I'm not unhappy!"

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing! Just ... it went by so quick. I wish we could do it again."

"Do it again?"

"Yeah, just ... never mind. It's silly."

Angel swerved; the car bumped the curb; she looked out to see the pink and white sign of another wedding chapel. He parked. "You want to do it again? We'll do it again."

In the days that followed, she took pleasure in poring over her collection of wedding pictures. They were all pretty much the same, but the backdrop used at the different chapels varied, some white and gold, with flowers and ribbons, one with a Hawaiian theme, another with Elvis, yet another with festoons of (fake) red roses. Seven ceremonies, in seven places, it had taken all night, until she was finally tired of it, convinced of its done-ness, and ready to eat a big pile of bacon and eggs just before dawn, drink lashings of coffee, cuddled against Angel in a booth at Denny's, still dressed in their wedding finery. The final photographs showed them there, taken with a disposable camera by their waitress, developed a day later at the Walgreen's on the strip. She bought a photo album there too, and arranged them all.

Proof. That she was a regular girl again, living her fondest wish.

~~~

"I don't know if this is going to work," Willow said. She'd said it about ten times already, and Spike was ready to strangle her. It was Sunday afternoon; she'd stalled them--as he saw it--until then, and arrived at the Summers house with a long face and a bag of "supplies". He assumed she hadn't told anyone what they were attempting, which was fine with him--he was in no mood to tangle with Giles as representative of official Watcherdom.

Joyce watched Willow's preparations as she unpacked baggies of herbs and little bowls and a large book onto the dining room table. She looked askance at everything, but there was such hope in her eyes, Spike wanted to put his hand over them, as if to protect them from the flash of a blast.

Getting Willow to help had been his idea, but he could see now the girl was clueless. The re-ensouling spell was a fluke. She didn't know much about witchcraft.

While it was going on, he went out on the back porch, standing in the shade of the house, to smoke. From here he heard indeterminate chanting, starting and stopping and starting again.

The world had shrunk in his hundred years, but it was still enormous. Still extensive enough to swallow up a little girl so neither the police, nor the private investigator Joyce had hired, nor the demon grapevine, so reliable for some things, could come up with a hit.

End of incomplete story

Notes:

While this story was never completed, there was a plan for how it would turn out:

Angel returns, human. But he's Liam again--essentially a shit. And he's a sort of dry-drunk-vampire, ie, not actually good with being human, but really wanting to be a vampire again.
Buffy, fleeing her fright of loving Spike and her alienation from her mother and friends, goes off with him. They marry, Buffy thinks they're going to have a nice normal life, but Angel is deceptive and not good to her.

Eventually Spike, with help from Joyce and Willow, tracks her down. Liam wants Spike to turn him, in exchange for taking off and never returning to bother Buffy again. But doing that will unleash Angelus again ... and a whole other set of problems.

Damn, I wish I'd actually finished this one. Just couldn't at the time.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Let's Get Lost